


I Want To Find You, Tear Out All Your Tenderness

by latinaeinstein (oneforyourfire)



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Biting, Character Death, Codependency, Dystopia, Face-Sitting, Fisting, Frottage, Jealousy, Knotting, M/M, POV Multiple, Polyamory, Rimming, Spitroasting, Threesome - M/M/M, Voyeurism, Werewolf Hunters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-21 22:46:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 51,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17651315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oneforyourfire/pseuds/latinaeinstein
Summary: “Little Red Riding Hood,” he croons. “You’re the mostawfultemptation for a big bad wolf.”





	I Want To Find You, Tear Out All Your Tenderness

**Author's Note:**

> 2015 fic
> 
> from the ohunlimited exchange
> 
> additional content warnings for a situation that might count as cheating (i know we're not exclusive, but i didn't know that you had a mate) and bdsm undertones

♂

The smell of pine is sharp in Sehun's nostrils, the cold air short in his lungs. Breath white, shoulders hunched, he shivers past a sudden icy blast of air. But it’s piercing, persistent, nonetheless, skittering along his goosebumped arms as he rights his jacket, scuffs his shoes against the concrete, tries to get further into character. He looks the part, at least, trembling, young, dolled up and pretty but in a sinful fuck-me-in-the-bathroom-stall-and-mark-me-all-over kind of way, Kyungsoo had praised earlier tonight, pulling back to admire his work, thumb at Sehun's flushed cheekbone. He's in all black, eyeliner smeared across his lids, clothes practically suction-sealed on, lips bitten and red, dark hair falling in his eyes. Decadence and corruptible youth. Ripe and just _perfect_ for the picking.

Sehun huddles almost subconsciously into the warm body in front of him. A man, too. Around his age. Too much eyeliner, gel product in his hair, he reeks of cologne, desperation. And Sehun is still a good 15 people from the entrance.

And maybe, he thinks, shuddering, maybe he should have requested they send Minseon noona with him, too. Team leader, older, more experienced, good company, overall, but also a woman—a hot, _shapely_ woman. Maybe, she could have worn a persusively short dress with a plunging neckline, charmed her way easily inside. And maybe Minseon, Sehun could have danced to allay suspicion, close and tight, true to character, then, too. Maybe she could have kissed him also, caught up in the atmosphere, the persuasive sway of his body. And for longer than the obligatory three seconds specified per Baekhyun’s drunken dare. Maybe she could have kissed him deeper, for real this time, seeing him _finally_ donsaeng, not just the awkward though good-natured kid in her division. Maybe she could have gotten carried away, left lipstick stains on his lips, collarbone, across his chest. Maybe she could have dragged him into her apartment, or his, or one of the nondescript pay-by-the-hour motels nearby. Maybe, fuck, maybe, they could have even... And even if she hadn’t, even if it had stayed distressingly professional, maybe, maybe actually, he could have used the company, the support. Maybe, actually, he shouldn’t be alone. Should at least have backup—his mentor, Wonshik, or even another rookie, Sanghyuk, Sungjae—just, just to play it safe, in case things go awry. Maybe, Sehun realizes, heart lurching in his chest, maybe this was a bad call. Maybe, he really, really fucked up.

This realization, it's demoralizing.

And fuck, why hadn't Wonshik tried to dissuade him? Why had they just—just resorted to this awful, awful sink or swim scenario? Why is he only _now_ realizing just how _ridiculous_ , ill-advised, suicidal—

The line moves. Sehun almost trips in his distress.

But no, he reasons, _remembers_ , he had _begged_ for this. His current duties—title: Junior Officer—are parole, intel, baiting, answering, always fucking _answering_ to others. Hunting, it's an eventual, a conditional, after he’s proven himself. Caught a wolf, _all by himself_. Finally finished his beat cop, scouting, auxilary duties. Gotten Wonshik's approval, the scrawling scribble of that hunter's signature on the proper forms, gotten his own badge, too—official and glossy and laminated white with embossed letters, the watermarked seal stamped across his face. Earned, finally, by virtue of his hard work, the respect of all of his peers. Lived up finally to his long, long list of references, his name.

This is his moment of truth.

And this is Sehun's _destiny_. He has been working up to this for years, studying in the academy library, leafing through police reports in his spare time, burning through the speedometer on his department-issued car, training in the basement gym to bulk up his lanky body, too. And he's been following this case, specifically, pouring over CCTV captures, interviewing bar owners, scouring maps, drawing conclusions. This is his moment to shine. Alone.

And here in the outskirts of the city where police presence is lax, the streetlights dim, the drinks cheap, the drunk are young, stupid, eager for cheap thrills. And Sehun blends in easily enough, tapping a restless tattoo with the heel of his shoe, bobbing his head to the reverberating bass. He can feel the music, the cold, the apprehension but also the conviction, in his bones.

They have to give you cause. In the current social climate, in the court of public opinion, mere existence is not grounds enough. Not anymore, at least. They have to give you cause, probable cause. And tonight, tonight is about finding that cause. Tonight is about contributing in some concrete way. Finding something more binding, more damning then hearsay, rumors, a bribed tip.

Alone. Independent. He can prove himself. He can show how ready he is. He's not just a rookie, not a dud, not a legacy deadweight. He can. He is. He will.

The line inches forward gradually, and the song switches, the tempo something slower, dirtier. Sehun thumbs at his ID card as he waits, furrows his brows, hypes himself up. He will try— _succeed_ —at putting a face to the things that go bump in the night, seeking out the big bad wolf.

 

True horror, monstrosity, evil is defined by the smallest ratio, the tiniest deviation. The most subtle shift off center. In DNA. Anatomy. Ability.

They—werewolves—are close. Close enough, activists have tried to argue. Human enough. But they’re still not _quite_. Defined by the warring, dual nature, the wrong, broken intermarriage. Man, beast. And the beast nature wins out at times. Too frequently. Has resulted in stolen livestock, torn limbs, lost lives, the most precarious, fragile peace, animosity all the while simmering beneath the surface.

They’re stuck at an impasse, a perpetual misunderstanding, punctuated with infrequent bursts of violence on both ends.

It is the perpetual pendulum swing of regard, but even in the kinder moments of coexistence—now, with truces, with laws, with open dialogue—there is still tension, a string stretched almost taut. And Sehun, Sehun still has a job.

They’ve tried—succeeded—at intermarriage, integration, incorporation, but the wolf—or the _fear_ of the wolf—it keeps winning out.

It had been worst. Much worse. In the olden days, the days of witch burnings, religious fervor, demonic possession, explicit oppression. Much, much worse. The dark days. The Great Winters, they called them, the Hollowed Out Blood Moons.

But it’s been better, too. Had been, for the longest time, with advancements, education, dialogue, approaching something resembling truly peaceful coexistence. The fear acknowledged as a stereotype, concentrated among only the most ignorant. The most fanatical. (Sehun’s father)

But then Jung Jinyoung, and it really only takes one bite.

And it’s been 15 years since that last attack, but human memory trumps records. Scars outlive human laws. And Sehun remembers, they all do. Won’t—can’t—let it go. It became a symbol, a rallying cry. The picture on his father's mantel, the name listed first in his mother's nighttime prayers.

She’d been a little girl. Five, dancing and singing too close to the edge, playing dress up, princess, serenading the trees. And they had found her bloodied shoe by the woods, her body later, hidden among the looming pines.

The wolf—Jinyoung, he’d had a name, had had a baseball card collection, Marvel superhero stickers on his binders, too—he’d been pubescent, going through his first Change. Alone, for that brief instance, walking home by himself and helpless to it, the pack had pleaded. He hadn’t been in control. Hadn’t meant. But his was the exception, not the rule, please. This was a tragedy, a freak accident. It’s not in wolves’ best interest to attack humans. And please, it’s not—not grounds.

But the city had killed their entire pack, their little girls and little boys, too. And vigilantes had killed another two packs. A warning, they’d called it. A reminder. They had to destroy, avenge at all costs. Teach a lesson and send a message.

But they—the werewolves—had called it a decimation, genocide, a cruel reminder of the olden days, the fact that no matter how many strides they’d made, no matter how many of their own humans had accidentally killed, they—werewolves—still didn’t count. And their humanity—their almost humanity, almost worth—was always contingent upon _real_ humans’ opinion of them. That it was too distressingly easy to pretend they weren’t cognizant, didn’t hurt, bleed, ache. That coexistence would always be strained when your oppressors—your more human oppressors—can kill you at their whim, murder and beat lessons into you.

Predictably, their arguments, political protests, had been largely ignored, and Sehun remembers that, too, young as he was, the people—almost people—screaming outside his father’s work, his own home. For justice, for recognition. And their memory is long, too, their bitterness runs deep, festering with each subsequent, unacknowledged injustice. Emboldened, vocally opposed, radicalized over time, too. And still ignored, swept under the rug. They're always expected to yield.

But sated, mollified, in the bloody aftermath, the town had conceded in part. So long as you agree to monitoring, tagging, record-keeping, police vigilance. So long as it never happens again. So long as you never give us cause to doubt.

And this is where Sehun comes into play.

Sehun cut his teeth on this. Veritably his father's son. He's been wanting since he was 10, when he got his first slingshot, was taught to shoot rocks at the cans in his backyard. _With wolves, son, accuracy is key. Always get the killshot_. Been fed the propaganda, schooled in the facts since he was old enough to know what this all meant, on what side of this battle he belonged. Learned to bear the heavy burden of his family's approval.

Sehun doesn’t concern himself overmuch with the specifics of it all. The politics. The ethics. He just seeks out approval of his peers, his superiors. Performs to the best of his abilities.

It’s a duty. Sehun has served, serves. Keeps the town safe. His family legacy alive. The others—the wrong, the monstrous—have given them cause for alarm, for worry, for wariness in the past. And in response, in defense, he’s wary, ever vigilant, quick to the draw.

And Tao, Huang Zitao, has given them cause. More than enough. He’s deserving, Sehun has decided.

Another outlier, they’ll probably argue, mean it, too. Tao’s been frequenting clubs in the bad parts of town. Shameless, open, dangerous, he's been charming men, women into compromising positions, then swallowing them whole, if Sehun’s sources—fellow werewolves, _enemy_ werewolves—are to be believed. Tao’s been bewitching, beguiling, breaking them open after he’s had his fill.

And distressed maids in hotel rooms have found ruined bodies, splayed open and broken across rumpled hotel sheets. The animal taking control, tearing at flesh. Five in total, sheep stumbling towards the slaughter.

And it’s very easy to externalize it, enchant it, excuse it. The draw, the want, some people feel towards the wolf. Easy to argue that they’ve been charmed, been helpless. But the magic doesn’t—as legend tells—go much beyond the Change, the long lives, the strength. There’s nothing inherently supernatural in their eyes, their scent. They’re equipped only with their supple bodies, sharp eyes, and Sehun supposes, maybe for some there’s a draw in the danger of it, too. The forbiddenness of it. And maybe, for some, that’s enough, enough of a charm, a reason, to quell the very human instinct to run far, far away.

But Sehun’s got his own charms. Tousled hair, lazy smirks, long lean limbs, bright, disinterested eyes that seem to say that maybe, maybe if you get closer, maybe if you buy me another drink, maybe I’ll give you something to remember me by. He's Tao’s type, too, young long, lean, lithe as he is.

Sehun’s got bite, too. The silver blade tucked into his boot. The amulet around his neck. The toned muscles, hidden strength in his long, lean limbs. The lazy, understated conviction that tonight, he’s gonna kill a monster, expose it to the light.

 

Sehun shrugs off his jacket as he steps inside, orders a drink. A lemon drop that has his lips puckering, the pretty woman behind the bar laughing as she swipes his card.

La Luna, it’s no more special than any of the other clubs in this area, cheap alcohol, warm bodies, thumping music. It's nondescript, noteworthy only in that it's extra close to the invisible border, the woods, close enough to be tempting. The overhead strobe lights sweep to paint the room in smoky blues, greens, golds. The shadows lend him a certain anonymity, harsh as they are, lend him boldness, too.

But he shivers again. This time in anticipation, trepidation.

Drink in hand, Sehun props himself against the bar, makes himself up as something falsely demure, but tantalizing. Back heavy against the wood, denimed thighs spread out, tilted up, Sehun raises his eyebrows in almost invitation, cocks his elbows and taps his fingers against the table. He thinks of all the men, women he’s charmed into his bed in his 25 years of life, channels them into a lazy confidence as he opens his body further, licking his lips, making eyes.

And this part is easy. Even if it has him rejecting too many suitors, laughing off too many invitations to dance, go someplace quiet, get another drink, baby.

And Sehun bobs, sips his way through four more songs, turns down a good 10 people by the time his quarry makes his presence known.

And he _is_ a presence. A black hole of energy, a subtle shift in the atmosphere, the slightest unease twisting in Sehun's gut. He is registered with a certain muted alarm, and Sehun’s eyes are drawn immediately. To dark-washed, too-tight jeans. A thin tank top, tan muscled arms. Messy black, black hair, artfully disheveled. The imperious tilt of one thick eyebrow, the arrogant angle of a sharp chin. Dark, dark eyes. Full lips. The slightest, feline curl.

 _Huang Zitao_.

Alone, too. Tempting and alluring. He's severely handsome, cruelly beautiful. Not quite. Not human.

His reputation precedes him. Accurate. True to form. Tao is tall, beautiful, dark, dangerous. Sleek and lethal, he moves through the shadows, moves Sehun thinks dimly with a sensual self-awareness, too smooth, too sinuous. Sinful.

His dark bangs fall into his eyes, but do little to soften the distinctly feral gleam in them. Golden and haunting. Not human. Not quite.

And there's something distinctly predatory in the way he shifts, scans the crowd. Sexual and feral, appraising but also dangerous. Sehun feels distinctly human, distinctly exposed, even halfway across the bar. Sehun has never been this close to a mature wolf before. Never when he's all alone. And there's a sharp heady punch of adrenaline as he catches Tao’s eyes. For the briefest second.

Sehun licks his lips, then, lets his bottom lip scrape invitingly across teeth.

 _Ripe for the picking, come on and pick me_.

Tao raises one perfectly arched eyebrow, tilts his head down in question, and Sehun lifts his own back—bares his throat—in invitation.

Tao starts to make his way over, every movement, smooth, seductive as he shifts through the college kids, strides slow, long. Right, right to Sehun. He's all liquid grace, but power still smoldering beneath every movement.

And he would be this easy, Sehun thinks in disdain. This shameless. He would be this careless. Distaste curls in Sehun's gut, twists with this night's bacon cheeseburger, the two sips of vodka he's allowed himself. Sehun swallows it down, smothers it fast.

He rises immediately, pushing himself upwards. He knocks over his drink, doesn't turn back.

"Hello," he breathes, airy, seductive, sure to pop his lips, flutter his eyelashes. And Tao returns the greeting, motions with his chin to the middle of the dance floor.

Tao's hands when they reach out to touch him are tentative, soft, but too hot and heavy. And when Sehun raises his lips in a teasing half-smirk at the hesitant touch, Tao tugs him forward.

Solid, hard, straight to the point when they meet, Tao drags Sehun flush with his body, and all too soon it's a slow, dirty grind, arms looping around Sehun's waist, hips dropping to press hard against his. Sehun can feel the ghost of Tao's breath against his forehead, his cheek.

Sehun bites back the bubble of disdain curling on his tongue, and plasters on a heavy-lidded purposeful smile.

The plan, after all, is to charm Tao into bed, wait to be given cause, then stab him through the chest. And oh, maybe Sehun hadn't thought this through all the way.

Sehun focuses on the faint heat of attraction, instead, relishes in it fully. The stretch of muscles, the heat of _man_ , the dark promises held in those heavy-lidded eyes.

 _Make him want, make him want. Want, too. Make him think you want him back_.

Moving intentionally seductive, too, Sehun presses back just as hard, tilts his hips up for more, when Tao fits a thigh between his, body rolling purposefully against his. Arms insistent at his waist, Tao keeps time with the pounding bassline.

And it affects him, this affectation.

Sehun sways just as filthy, slides his hands up Tao's sides to rest on his shoulders. Sehun scrapes his fingernails against the nape of Tao's neck. Urging Tao down, Sehun drags his nose temptingly along the peek of collarbone that Tao's shirt fails to cover, smiles up at him in invitation. He thumbs near Tao's hairline, bites his lip at the soft sound, soft shiver that Tao releases.

 _Get him away, kill him_ , entrapment with the Department seal of approval.

Head tilted down at the bold caress, Tao's nose grazes his, eyes heavy on his face, hand heavy, wandering on his waist, hips, ass.

"Want to get out of here?" Sehun proposes. Tao pulls him even closer, hums against him. His lips brush Sehun's throat, nostrils flaring as he inhales deep. The rush of air is sharp.

"Keep up," he teases, pulling away. He turns. Sharp, too. Blends in suddenly as he retreats.

The entire encounter has been less than 20 minutes in the making, but already Sehun has—already he's—fucked up.

The back entrance opens with a whooshing gust of wind, and Sehun weaves desperately through the thrum of the crowd.

"Found. Following," he types out, fingers unsteady on the send message as he runs out, too. After Tao. Jacketless, heedless into the harsh bite of winter, right into the woods.

His phone, already slipped into his back pocket, vibrates in response mere seconds later, but he ignores it.

And the branches sting against his bare arms, the pain registering mercifully as warmth as he stumbles after Tao.

He's going too slow, Sehun thinks dimly, though Sehun himself is sprinting, lungs protesting in the thin, freezing air. Tao is too slow, still too human. Deliberate, probably, always for a reason, but Sehun isn't given much time to reflect on that as he follows him into an abandoned house.

 

Wheezing, dizzy, ears ringing in the cold air, resting his hand briefly against the varnished wood, Sehun drops a pin in his phone to note location before trying the door, stumbling inside.

He steps gingerly over the shattered bottles, swallows past the the sticky sweet stench of old liquor, the musk of aged water, as he waves his phone, squinting into the too-cold, too-dark room.

To his left, an oil lamp flickers on. The shadows are harsh. Sehun continues to squint, stutter step.

And Tao presses him flat against the wall. Sehun goes back with an undignified squawk. Tao’s fingers around his wrists are too warm. Hot, even, they blaze a trail across his trembling arm, curl around his shoulders, too, as he pins Sehun to the wall, holds him there.

And yeah, Sehun's fucked up.

"I don’t get the motel treatment, at least," Sehun tries, falsely light, but breathless and reedy as fuck.

And Tao’s fingers wrap around his throat, squeeze just briefly. Tao's thumb drags across Sehun's adam's apple. Sehun gulps heavily, windpipe fluttering from the pressure then, head dizzy.

"Kinky," he breathes weakly, fucking _terrified_. "Don’t you think—don’t you think I deserve at least a bed. Somewhere soft, where you can spread me open. That's—isn't that what you want. Why we're here."

His smirk is strained.

Tao’s laugh is strained, too, his smile sharp. “I can smell it on you, you know. Underneath the stench of your cologne. It was harder at first, over there, when your hands were on me, _distracting_ me, but here." Tao inhales. "Oh here, the amulets, the charms. The wolfsbane. The ash tree. The silver, too. It’s bitter, _hot_. ”

Hot, Sehun thinks, like the breath rushing out against his forehead, skating over his tingling scalp. And Sehun’s stomach drops, his heart quickens. Fucked up, he’s fucked up.

“Pretty little Red Riding Hood, wandered so far from home, trying to protect yourself from me,” Tao lilts in a mocking sing-song, overrounding his syllables, pausing to lick his lips. “But you're still out here in the woods where nobody will hear her scream.”

Disdain, indignation burn in Sehun's throat, hot and thick, acidic as bile. He swallows slowly. Past the spike of fear, the instinctual human urge to run, at the not normal, not quite, not human. It sings through his veins, again, a sudden spike of adrenaline, the white noise reaching a fever pitch, screaming at him to retreat from the wrong. "Want me?" he offers, nonetheless. "Make me scream nice and loud? That's—"

The hand at Sehun's throat falls, drags over his sternum to thumb at his chest, the outline of his amulet. He tugs the chain free with a hollowed pop. The other hand wanders to palm at Sehun's, his knife. Tao's grip is hard, tight, painful but also appraising, lingering. The metal bites into his own skin, and Sehun registers the faint sting of pain as his knife falls to the ground, is kicked away. Focuses on that because it's realer, safer than the man—almost man—pressing impossibly close to him.

“Little Red Riding Hood," Tao repeats. “What are you doing out here, all alone? Armed. Fancying yourself a hunter. The _huntsman_. Oh no, pretty Little Red. You're temptation. Meant to be eaten right _up_."

Sehun arches away from the hand skating down his chest, tries to make himself smaller, melt into the rotten wood at his back. His chest heaves, and his lips part in another gasp, without his permission.

"Oh no," Tao drawls. "No no no Little Red. _Pretty_ Little Red."

It’s emasculating, patronizing, humiliating. And he’s not Little Red Riding Hood. He’s not helpless, not hapless. He’s the huntsman. He's an equal match, the hero in the end. In the _right_. Not the victim. Not the _prey_ , Sehun insists. Vocally, at least attempts it, his words breathy and broken.

_I'm a hunter. I'm going to hunt you_

Yes, even as he trembles, near tears when confronted with his quarry. Even as an ugly, tiny part of him screams that Tao is right. That he's just a child playing dressup, the weakest link, unworthy, not enough after all, that he's gonna _die_ like this, serving no ultimate purpose, no greater good. On the cusp of something great, something heroic, wasted potential. A shame, shame, shame.

Because he’s thumbed through the glossy pictures, read the police reports, stuck pins in maps. He knows how this scenario will end, helpless as he is to fight the press of Tao’s fingers along his heavy, heaving chest.

Because even then, Tao cannot take this from him. Tao is hardly the first werewolf he’s tailed. Hardly the first he's helped catch. Hardly the worst. Tao's extraordinary for the utter banality of his crimes. He's not going to—Sehun's not a fucking _child_.

Sehun pants hard through his mouth as Tao crowds further into him. Chest to chest, thigh to thigh. Arm at his neck to hold his captive. Breath mingling with his own. The elbow at his throat digs just the slightest bit deeper, and Sehun's breathing is shallow, chest tight, head light with the lack of oxygen. With the fear streaking through his veins.

"So, my hunter, what will you do to me," he mocks, "now that you have me?"

Sehun opens his mouth to speak, chokes on another whimpered reply. Tao smirks, drags his fingernails against the cotton of his ribbed tank top, inducing a fresh wave of shivers, fear. His fingers splay, drag against Sehun's pebbled nipples.

And Sehun hasn’t wet his pants since he was 11, when he'd wandered too close to the woods, been dragged and spooked by a couple of high school kids playing pretend at monstrosity. And he refuses to now. Even as his eyes widen in fear and his skin suffuses with goose bumps.

“Oh, Little Red Riding Hood,” he repeats, and his hand shifts, cupping his face. His thumb drags across Sehun’s bottom lip, catching there,lingering there as he smiles down at him. It’s predatory, dangerous, sharp. “Such big eyes,” he drawls. "Such pretty lips, too. I could just eat you _up_.”

They’re better lovers, it’s purported. Sehun has read. More beast when aroused, their movements are punishing, ravishing, hard and fast, fierce in the most consuming, perfect way. Unbidden, unwelcome, the recollection makes his face heat, and Tao smirks, presses further forward. Too tight. Too much.

And this isn't supposed to be one of their powers.

“Tell me, Little Red Riding Hood, what made your heart rate spike like that? Your cheeks are warm, too.” He nuzzles those next. First left, then right. "Hmmmmm, the stink almost covers it up, but darling, Little Red, I can smell it on you. Sweet. Thick. Sticky. Submission," he says. "Want to spread your legs for me. Bare that pale throat. Want me to eat you alive, don’t you, darling? And I’ll be good for you, keep my claws away. Nice and soft for my Little Red Riding Hood. You want so _badly_. And I _can_."

"Kill me," Sehun manages, voice wavery, abandoning pretense. "Tear out my throat. Drink my blood. Kill me like all the others."

He knows. He knows. He knows.

Tao has the audacity to look momentarily shocked, mouth falling open, eyebrows shooting up into his bangs. But he smooths his expression easily enough. Unnervingly fast. “If I killed all those people, my darling Little Red, then why are you here? No sense of self-preservation?” Tao tips forward, abandons pretense, too, mouthing at Sehun's collarbone. His lips are hot, his tongue teasing. The next words, he speaks them against Sehun's skin. “Or are you chasing the high? Still want me in spite of the fear? Hungry for it? My mouth? My hands? My body? My cock?" He couples the last syllable with a slow, lingering suck. "I could _ruin_ you.”

And Sehun chokes back a whimper at the way his own head tips back at the movement. His fingers clench into fists.

“It wasn’t me,” Tao clarifies, pulling away, licking his lips. Sehun follows the movement.

And something painful and strange twists in Sehun’s gut at the quiet clarity in Tao's eyes, the soft sincerity of his words. The charm of it. The fact that it's affecting him, momentarily convincing him, without his permission, against his better nature.

“I don’t hurt," Tao adds after a beat, words low and provocative anew. "Not without permission. So give me permission, darling Little Red.”

His fingers close around Sehun's neck again. Loose, promising, nonetheless. Sehun bites back another whimper.

“I prefer bruises of the sex variety,” he drawls. “I don’t hurt unless you want me to.”

"I _don't_ ," Sehun insists. Voice frail, weak. He feels so small. Tao cups his face, cradles it almost.

“I can give you what you want, too,” he murmurs. His shoulders shift, muscles straining beneath his thin shirt. They roll forward as he presses even closer. He’s just the slightest bit taller, but Sehun feels so small, so vulnerable, so pathetically human and afraid. Turned on, too, beneath the surface, an ugly, hidden part of himself clamoring for more even as his body shivers at the skin contact. An awful, desperate, confused part of himself relishes in heated, terrifying, towering solidity of Tao's body pressed tight to his.

Tao’s lips open, latching on once more. Hot and wet, they drag, and his teeth are sharp against Sehun’s collarbone. He continues his exploration, dragging his nose up Sehun’s throat, chuckling at his labored breathing. Tao’s nose whispers over Sehun’s jawline, and it’s a heady chemical cocktail of emotions. Sehun’s head feels dizzy, his skin tight, hot. He trembles.

“It's so delicious," he says softly. “Your arousal.” He nuzzles deeper into his throat, his breath, lips hot against Sehun’s goosebumped, trembling skin. A rumble of approval vibrates against Sehun's chest. “Adrenaline, fear, arousal.” Tao’s cups his jaw in a lover’s caress, thumbs idly at his cheekbone as he forces Sehun’s eyes upwards. And there’s interest in the arch of his brow, the curve of his lip. It’s dangerous, forbidden, wrong. Sickening, too.

“Want me?” he teases again as he tilts his own head down. His movements are too graceful, liquid, lithe. It's impressive considering his size, the power sizzling just beneath his golden skin. "I can keep going."

And Sehun’s shamefully,visibly aroused, straining against his pants. Tao as close as he is can feel it, see it, _smell_ it.

Sehun bites back a moan, and Tao laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners. “I know you do. The smell, little Red Riding Hood. Say yes," he urges.

But Tao is gonna _kill_ him. And Sehun laments all the months spent in the basement, dodging blows, being tossed around by Chanyeol—the Punisher—and Kyungsoo, small and slight, but readily able to fell any opponent, eager to pin Sehun down with his delicate wrists, small-boned limbs. And all the hours on the field. His stolen charms, his useless knife. It's all been for naught. He's gonna fucking die. At 25. Right here. Half-hard, pinned to the rotting wood of an old table.

Sehun shakes his head, and Tao sighs heavily, pouts theatrically. Dramatically off-put. "Come back if you want some more. I won't take any other playthings. I'll be saving myself special just for you, Little Red."

Sehun jerks his head again. Stuttered, but earnest. _No_.

"Come back," Tao trills, nonetheless. He fucking _sing-songs_ , and Sehun is still so hard, shaking, shaking, shaking. "Next Saturday, Little Red. Same time, same place. But only if you want a good time. I'll be waiting."

Sehun gasps sharply when Tao retreats. All the adrenaline leaves his body, replaced instead with the icy immobility of panic, dread. He’s inundated with a potent wave of shame, nausea, and his stomach twists painfully as he lets out a groan.

Shaking, he's not sure how he makes it home. He thinks he hails a cab, dazed as he meets his team (“I got lost,” he lies. He’s disheveled, burning in shame long after the fact. Chanyeol, Kyungsoo, they don’t question his story, and Sehun wonders, mortified, if they can smell it on him, too). Sehun collapses through his apartment door.

Sehun inhales deeply when he gets home, tries to get the earthy musky smell off his skin. But it’s soaked into his clothes, saturated every pore. Potent, heady, poisonous, but sweet, craved. It's dangerous, and Sehun scrubs his skin pink, almost raw, in an effort to wash the memory away.

That night, he dreams of haunting, mocking black eyes, sleek hair, an upturned smirk, the longest, lithest limbs holding him down, holding him captive. He wakes up unbearably hard, clenches his eyes shut, swallows down a sudden wave of nausea as he tugs himself to completion, bites his lips to keep from crying out.

He's panting when he recovers, fingers still snug beneath the waistband of his boxers, the tremors still wracking his body.

Sehun gropes blindly on his bedside for his phone afterwards, fingers still sticky, cleaned hastily on his bedsheets.

 _Tao_ , he manages, fingers shaking on his phone’s screen, _works alone. Probably born._ (He moves with the quiet surety of it.)

 _Leader_ , he decides, types, after a beat. _He’s killed 5 people. College students. Uses sex._

Sehun recalls the tantalizing peek of firm, supple skin, the wide breadth of his shoulders, the tapered solidity of his waist, the crowding helplessness that Sehun had felt as he'd been pressed bodily against the wall.

 _Effective_ , he adds.

And Sehun passes out in a sticky, heedless mess.

A

A world away, cocooned in his lover's embrace, Joonmyun smells the need—somebody else's need, his fear, his desperation, too—lingering on the crook of Tao's neck, the inside of his wrists. Sweet, pathetic, it's easy enough to snuff out, easy enough to replace. Ephemeral as it is, it taints in the most fleeting, inconsequential way.

A human. A hunter, Tao had said. The usual. But official, too. Charmed, armed, but ultimately helpless, disconcertingly easy to fluster, fuck up. Not fuck, though, not this time. He'd been too skittish, actually. Had yelped, leapt at that the opportunity to leave.

"He's probably not gonna come back," Tao breathes, and Joonmyun only hums in acknowledgment, the sound warm and wet against Tao's sweaty, musky throat. It smells of Joonmyun now. Deep, rich, claimed, Tao smells as he _should_. Touches, kisses, holds, much the same. And he's an ever a soothing balm to the burdens Joonmyun has to bear. A warm, welcome salve to the exhaustion, anger, hurt bleeding into Joonmyun's limbs. "He was more scared than turned on," Tao continues, tone languid, post-coital. The beauty of their mundane, the perfection of their domesticity, in spite of all the struggles, the pain, Tao smells feels like home, tastes like it, too. His, Joonmyun’s to treasure, keep. "I really don't think he'll come back."

Amusement curls in Joonmyun's gut, curls his lips, tickles at Tao's lips, too. A semiotic, empathetic response. Every emotion is felt two-fold, doubled, especially after sex. And his love, his love is the strongest. "Tao," he says fondly, arguing.

But Tao shakes his head, presses a shy smile into his bare shoulder as he insists. More firmly this time. "He won't. I was _there_."

"Clearly," Joonmyun says, sifting his fingers through Tao's dark, dark hair, shifting to cup his throat, "you've never had a good look at yourself."

Tao drags him forward by way of response, shuts him up with a lazy kiss. And arms looped around Joonmyun's waist, bare legs falling open automatically, Tao gives him another opportunity to saturate his pores, claim him. As Joonmyun licks his way down Tao's warm, welcoming body.

"He's not going to be able to _stop_ thinking about you," Joonmyun maintains, mouthing down his navel, painting a hot, wet trail towards his hardening cock. And Tao is gasping, grasping at his hair as he arches into Joonmyun's touch. Responsive always, perfect always. "Probably—probably touching himself right now just _thinking_ about you."

And Joonmyun slurps, Tao whimpers, with every wet, succulent descent.

Tao's head tips back against the pillowcase, hair whispering over the coarse material as he pants, twists. Upwards into his mouth as Joonmyun swallows, hums, ruining him purposefully with distressingly potent swirls of his tongue.

Tao is helpless to it, begging, bucking.

Joonmyun chokes on his cock, wraps a fist around him, instead, stroking as Tao pitches sharply with a low _Alpha_.

Joonmyun licks even lower, tongue fluttering against Tao's entrance, as Tao's legs tremble, splay open in invitation. He moans even louder, writhes down.

Joonmyun is hit with a heady punch of arousal, want, the pheromones making him dizzy with pleasure.

Joonmyun can taste Tao's scent and his own, the faint lingering of a hunter _almost_ , as he licks his way inside with a precise, practiced ease. He hum as he probes, and Tao's body is quivering in pleasure, legs shaking near Joonmyun's shoulders as he moans even louder, all the more wrecked.

One of his hands twists into his own hair, the other slides down to grip his erection. He begins to tug. And Joonmyun's own cock hangs heavy between his legs as he spreads Tao's legs further, angles him deliberately for deeper penetration. Tao is panting, whimpering distressingly louder in response.

Tao's body, already loosened up, ever eager, ever responsive, opens up so easily for his gliding tongue, muscles fluttering, clenching around it as Joonmyun presses further forward, tongue delving, tasting, ruining. Ruining him for anybody else.

And Joonmyun, Joonmyun isn't faring much better. He is drunk with pleasure, too, swimming in it. Dizzy on the sweet, delicious scent of Tao, the way he falls pliant, legs splaying open just for him. "Alpha. My alpha,” he sobs helplessly. And Joonmyun indulges in the sight, the scent, the smell, the taste, the exquisite pleasure playback that comes with making Tao fall apart.

And Joonmyun is intent on seeing it through. There's a heartaching elegance in Tao's disarray.

But even then, Tao's still—

"He won't—he's just gonna have to be an almost," Tao insists, moans, bowing, his strokes quickening. His muscles undulate beneath his taut, trembling skin. "Lost cause." Joonmyun thrusts forward more forcefully, slurping pointedly as he jabs his tongue fully inside, pulses around grooved throbbing flesh. And Tao's head tips back, words lost, dissolving into helpless pleas for more. Harder, faster, fingers, please, fingers, too.

 _Always, always, always, Tao. Anything at all_.

Joonmyun reaches down to touch himself, too. Aching as Tao writhes down on his mouth, all the more eager. His stomach muscles contract and expand as he grinds down, beautiful and affected.

"I love you," Tao manages, a wrecked whisper, and Joonmyun can _feel it_. In every delicately beautiful fuck upwards.

Joonmyun pulls back enough to tilt Tao's hips just so, eases a finger inside, and Tao lets out another broken, desperate sound.

 _Your, yours, yours_ , Tao screams with his body. Words, too. And he's a steady and a concrete, a forever, even smelling just slightly wrong, fleetingly claimed.

He is so easy to want, love, treasure. For everybody else, too.

And the others, hunters, vigilantes, ever eager to destroy, but they fall so easily for Tao's charms. Wells of information when stroked just _right_ , invaluable for Joonmyun's cause. And Tao, he's just so _good_ at making people want him. Tao has to _know_.

Joonmyun presses forward even harder, curls his finger pointedly, deliberately, precisely, and Tao is beautiful, just exactly, he wants to insist, too, splayed open like that, legs trembling, back arching as he comes.

♂

That next morning, in the harsh clarity of sunlight, Sehun cleans his department-provided apartment.  
Takes out his trash, does all his laundry, checks the backlogs of his email. Decompresses, disengages.

 

Sehun logs onto his network database that Monday. It's information he already knows, files he sifted and memorized in preparation for this baiting mission, but maybe, maybe in his eagerness to prove himself, he'd missed something. Maybe there was an explanation, after all. There _has_ to be. Tao has to have acted that way for a reason.

And it's sparse, honestly speaking. Incomplete even with all the mandatory registration, the heavy, overt monitoring. And the piecemeal attempts at cataloging, understanding, haven’t yielded much by way of literature, either. They're secretive, suspicious, secluded. Don't usually like to offer more than is required of them by law. And the ignorance invites speculation, misinformation, creates discord.

There are the mandatory facts all wolves has to surrender:

Name, age, criminal records, blood type, date of first change, pack affiliations.

(Huang Zitao, 27, none, AB, 14, Two Moons)

But there are things that human don't care to understand, things wolves don't care to divulge.

Mating rituals, individual pack dynamics, social structures beyond that, and most importantly what would have a werewolf luring a Junior Officer into an abandoned house, stripping him of his weapons, leaving him hard and ashamed but safe, whispering not threats, but promises of more.

Tao, Sehun decides, is an outlier in that regard.

Werewolves like to keep inside, usually. Apart. Insulate themselves from humans. Not give cause, cause a stir. There has been a certain fierce self-regulation especially, after Jinyoung, after the worst. And for Tao to be _allowed_ to—

Sehun closes another file folder. Wolves of interest.

There have been anarchists factions, in recent times. More radical, they argue vocally against the mistreatment of their kind. Abolitionists, they call for a destruction to the system, some more explicitly for the complete eradication of their more human counterparts. Words, never acted upon. But words, enough to have them jailed, subject to the court of human peers. It's a capital offense.

But Two Moons, Tao's pack, they're _weak_ , purposeless, _docile_ , supported by the Kim estate, ever grateful as a result for their assimilationist, politician ties. They're primarily Chinese, refugees running from a homeland that did even less to recognize their kind, a homeland that had in recent years outlawed their existence, necessitated their exodus. Not even a nuisance, they keep their heads down. They are grateful, too, of the decidedly better circumstances here. Surveillance, infrequent bouts of violence, they're nothing really compared to enslavement, extermination. There's a certain gratitude in the way they operate. A gratitude that would belie anarchist leanings.

Tao hasn't been tagged as such, either. Has given no indication. There's nothing in his behavior to indicate—

Sehun sighs heavily. There's no _purpose_. And then what he'd done to Sehun. Tao he'd had a hunter in his fucking grasp and yet he still hadn't—

Another click. Pack memberships, conflicts.

Werewolves have been losing land, dying out, even now under the relatively favorable conditions. Urban sprawl has been choking their resources, privatization and development have been cutting off their lands, commandeering their reserves. And that's led to tension, too, both inter and intrapack conflict. Strained, stifled, they turn on each other. Petty, like humans, over land, stolen mates, violated landmarks. Alphas, non-alphas alike vie for a higher position. New packs spring up, die out. Xenophobia has taken a marked rise, too. Packs like Two Moons, the foreign born Full Moon, they've both been the object of ire, hatred, jealousy.

Further reason why that night, Sehun's scouting activities, why they'd been so _important_.

Werewolves, they lie, too. Werewolves, they fight. Werewolves, they betray. Werewolves, they're messy and contradictory and decidedly human in that aspect. Human also in that discord is stamped out. Distinct trangressions— _murder_ —addressed.

But there are no arrests, assaults on record. Nothing beyond the most shady, self-serving testimony to tie Tao to the murders _specifically_.

And Tao, how did he— _does he_ manage so much free reign?

Leader, he'd decided that night. Alpha. The strongest fighter, the biggest wolf, probably. Unchecked power, unchecked lust. Has more political clout than his affiliations would suggest. Because he hasn’t been stopped, immature and reckless as he is. Causing a stir, leaving his name.

Unmated, obviously, Sehun elaborates now. Not tied down. A mated wolf, he wouldn't—not like this.

There’s a certain sentimentality in it. A finality in it, too. Sex, love. Werewolves come to sexual maturity after the Change, attend the Moon Rites every third full moon until they find their One and then mate for life afterwards. Note it with a bite, a tattooed mark, but not a proper ceremony. Nothing proper beyond public sex. They reproduce, if they can. Break away to form a family, stay with a pack of their choice. Soulbound, urged since puberty to seek out their One, they don’t usually sleep around. _Especially_ not with humans.

Tao is an outlier in that regard, too.

Old enough to have found his One already. But no,Tao hasn’t. _Can't_ have. He wouldn’t behave like this if he had. Seducing and smothering the young and naive, seeking them out.

He’s not domesticated, not broken. He’s brazen, open, invites the attention. And that’s—that’s still allowed. What he'd done to Sehun that night, too. But the bodies, the fucking _bodies_.

Tao, Tao must be stopped.

Sehun just needs proof. That night, that night was supposed to be proof. But he’d fucked up. And Sehun needs to go back, right his wrongs, find his evidence. Damning proof.

 

He files a report that day. Lies by omission. Asks Chanyeol, Kyungsoo to help him train again, he thinks he's getting a little soft. Sehun gets a new knife, a new amulet, harangues himself very vocally for being so careless as to have dropped them. The last mistake—the amulet—is the most damning. The most difficult to secure. Charms take time, energy. Small and powerful, the mixture is dangerous, takes long to concoct.

Put at the mercy of the small, but terrifying Baekhyun, Sehun bows his head, bites his lip, apologizes profusely as he continues his lie. There's a verbal lashing, a reminder about how any Junior Officer hoping to make _Hunter_ ranks should do well to protect his weapons. Respect his station.

(Next time, Sehun decides, he'll ask Jaehwan. Jaehwan is much more indulgent)

The amulets are to protect them in the worst case scenarios. Worse than outright death. Becoming one of _them_. Wolves, they don't ever fare well alone. Worse so when they're turned. Worst yet when they're former hunters, legacies. His father has likened it to a prosecutor finding himself on death row. Subject to the whims, wrath, of those he's hurt and angered.

And there are fates worst than quick death.

But Tao had torn Sehun's own charms so _easily_ , Sehun remembers, not in the least bit affected. He could have—So easily, he could have just—

 _Ruined_ him.

But hadn't cared to. Hadn't deemed Sehun worthy, maybe. He'd _spared_ him, for whatever reason. Asked him to come back, too.

Sehun is perplexed, but grateful, all the more determined to find the _why_.

And he shivers past a memory, unwelcome and unbidden, Sehun at twelve, his father's hand heavy on his shoulder, holding him steady, forcing him to watch. Captive, watching the captive wolf. A former, careless Officer, bitten, found convulsing like that on his edge of the woods, convulsing now, too screaming. He kept calling for Sehun's father, for Sehun by name, begging, his cries discordant, but resonating, haunting. They haunted Sehun still. His body was confused, shifting erratically human to wolf to human, thrashing, pitching, the sickening sound of muscles popping, bones breaking, teeth and fangs gnashing, all the while begging for some reprieve. _It's so hot. Please, please, help me please_. "Look," his father had insisted, instead, forcing Sehun's gaze steady as golden eyes had glowed back at him, desperate trembling limbs had reached out for him. "Remember this, Sehun. When they claim domesticity, when they tell you they're human enough, worthy enough, remember, son, that this is what lay beneath him." Sehun had thrown up afterwards, angry, confused tears swimming in his vision, his father's hand, his appraisal, his voice so fucking _heavy_ , reminding him all the while.

And that could have—could have so easily been Sehun.

 

Werewolves, they fall into two classes: those born and those bitten—created.

The born, they're easy to find, marked from birth as they are. Doomed, maybe, from the start. But the _created_ , they are the dangerous ones, the wildcards, truly untamed, feral. Rarer with the passage of time, the self-regulation that Jinyoung's attack had necessitated. They're truly helpless to the Change, insecure and untrained and unused to it. Lost and all the more lethal for it.

And in the worst days, the awful, frenzied, fearful days of yore, the born—readily identifiable—were gathered, killed. The babies—almost human babies—were drowned, smothered, dashed against rocks. The adults, bared naked, humiliated, then burned alive. Brutal public spectacles, warnings to potential sympathizers. Fiercely effective.

And the created—when found—were chained, starved to death, driven mad in captivity. The wolf outweighs the human in those instances, fellow wolves had tried to argue. They need to be in groups, need to be held through the worst of it. It’s too dangerous, too maddening to bear alone. Some—most—they don't survive.

In these days, these days of tolerance, peace, the born are merely carded, catalogued, asked to surrender information. They have to abide by curfew, be subject to random searches.

But the created, their fate remains as bleak as in those olden days. Cast aside, friendless, islands unto themselves. Still caged, still alone when detained, but often the wolves take care of them first, make examples of them, too. Or suffer that careless officer's fate. Sehun's father's methods, they had been standard operating procedure. Still are.

And it doesn't matter much in the grand scheme of things. They die the same way, after all.

Tao isn't created, but Sehun very well could have been. That night, it would have been easy.

His stomach twists sharply at the thought, pulse quickening beneath his goosebumped skin.

 

And at night, he strokes himself to the memory of it, biting his lips, twisting in his sheets. Clandestine masturbation sessions with the most insidious memories.

And Sehun _has_ to go back. He can't explain it, but he still _has_ to.

Ω

Delegation, delineation, demarcation, they have them seeing less and less of each other some days. This message, this vision that Joonmyun has. True equality, torn chains, being allowed to embrace the beast, determine their own fate. The necessary work towards that. That, too. It steals away their moments, makes the ache for this all the stronger.

Joonmyun is a deadweight in his arms. Exhausted, emptied out. A large, looming presence. But smaller than him, smaller shoulders to bear such a heavy weight.

The title, his title, is hidden, unknown, but the duties no less demanding. Alpha, his Alpha. Leader, his Leader. In everything, but name. And Joonmyun's eyes, his heart, his body bear the heavy, heavy burden, shoulder it all alone.

_They can't know. It'll make them easier to hurt us if they know. Make it easier for them to find us, to target you. I have to protect you. Us. This pack._

And Tao can read the fatigue in his limbs, the parts of him that others have tried to steal, sully. Can feel it, too. A phantom ache pulsing underneath his own skin.

In these, their intersections, Tao indulges, soothes, distracts. Speaks of the more mundane duties: the childcare, the housekeeping, the pack gossip, squabbles.

"They're getting big," Tao breathes, divulges, fingers tiptoeing up Joonmyun's sides. _Their_ —the pack's—babies, their future. "They'll go to school soon."

Wolves, they're allowed to attend school, integrated officially though in practice segregated. Up until 8th grade, around the time puberty—the Change—starts to take place. The state only covers up until that point, but some of the brighter ones go to school afterwards, too. High schools, colleges that will allow it. They blend in easily enough, after all. Only leave during Moon Rites and full moons when they’re extra vulnerable to the Change, less in control.

Tao, he'd gone to high school, Joonmyun through 3 years of college, the others in their pack only through 8th grade.

But these children—the first children since Joonmyun became Alpha, the ones that matter most, deserve the _very_ best—they'll go as far as they can. Masters Degrees, doctorates, Joonmyun has _promised_ their parents (And Joonmyun, he never breaks his promises). They'll truly make something of themselves. We'll do better by them.

Chanshik, Jongin, Junghwan, Sunwoo.

Joonmyun smiles against him, eyes crinkling, eyelashes fluttering, lips curling near Tao's throat. He's naked, skin warm, thrumming beneath Tao's questing fingertips, lips vibrating as he hums.

And Tao's hands are exploratory but languid, exhausted, too. He traces mindless patterns, a warm, familiar circuit, as he curls into Joonmyun's collarbone, nuzzles into him bodily. And he _belongs_ there. Cradled tight in between Joonmyun's shoulder and neck. Was made to be held right there.

 _His_ , Joonmyun has always been his. And there will never be anyplace else for him.

There’s a sense of belonging, an Otherness, a greatness to which they all belong. Bigger than the wolf. Bigger than the animal.

But this tie—this bond—it's bigger than that, too. So vast, his heart threatens to implode from the weight of it.

Tao presses even closer, tighter, melts into him until Joonmyun is relenting, softening, too. Completion, this is completion.

"I love you," Joonmyun says. Soft, absent, sleepy, but all the truer for it.

"You're perfect," Tao returns.

And Tao can feel that, too. The hum of satisfaction rippling through his own veins, tightening his heart. Love so potent, it hurts. He can feel Joonmyun's, his own.

"Saturday," Joonmyun reminds him, fingers tracing mindless, purposeless patterns, and Tao nods against him, sluggish, unsure.

Joonmyun's fingers tiptoe down Tao's side. More mindful, purposeful, intentional, and Tao gasps, moans.

"Break him."

♂

The week has passed in a mess of other failed expeditions—the loitering teen wolves getting too comfortable at the border of the college town, the Cha's missing dog and pawprint-covered lawn, collected intelligence about the burgeoning anarchists foundation—and exhaustion weighs heavy on his frame. Thinner, Kyungsoo had chided. Weaker for it.

He's been distracted, in a notable funk. Raising concern, much more than usual.

And that's further reason, Sehun justifies, to make this questionable choice. Dealing with the problem head-on. Confronting the source of his preoccupation. The bad, bad daydreams that keep intruding on his work.

And maybe, he tries to reason, too, he's testing a theory, hoping repeated exposure will dull his senses. Maybe, maybe he's trying to find a way out, after all. Maybe this is aversion therapy. An experiment in desensitization.

That could also—it would also serve as a justification at this point.

And even if the larger part of him insists this is ill-advised, Sehun swallows it down. He focuses instead on the burning animation of conviction, borrowed conviction. His father's, his job title's. The hunters', whose invitations to drinks he'd turned down.

He had forgone the tight, dark clothes, the hair gel, the eyeliner, settled instead for comfort, utility. Armed, still, charmed, too, all the more vigilant as he stutter steps towards that abandoned building.

In the biting cold, he tightens his jacket, lifts his hood to cover his face. It smells of fabric softener, his own shampoo. Human, grounding. And Sehun shudders at the memory, Tao inhaling deeply, his rumble of approval rippling against Sehun's skin.

And _no_ , he knows he shouldn't be here. Shame, intrigue, they’re dangerous, disarming, potentially devastating. And the absurdity of this weighs heavily on his conscious, but still—still he moves closer, opens the door.

The door creeks, his feet stumble, and there's a sudden warmth pressed against his front. Magnificent and nude, hot to the touch, Tao chuckles darkly in his ear.

And Sehun's mouth goes dry. He shivers visibly, unable to hide it, and the despair settles again, icy and suffocating. He's right back to where he started. Captive, captivated, fucked.

And even with conviction, anger, indignation, prior planning on his side, he's still be incapacitated, immobilized, embarrassingly fast.

"Back already," Tao smiles, slurs, shifting, sliding smooth, sinful. He looks especially frightening, especially alluring in the oil lamp's golden glow.

And Sehun fights the desire to cringe away, the equally strong, paradoxical desire to press closer, too. Head lolling to the side, breathing hard through his mouth as Tao walks his fingers up his arms, along his chest, rests one warm palm on his face, urges Sehun's eyes to lock with his one more.

There’s the telltale corona of color, golden, lingering around their irises for a beat too long after the light has pulled away. It’s the wolf in him, the low, the base, the feral. What Sehun is supposed to be _killing_.

Sehun looks into animal eyes for just the briefest moment before they shift back to human, warm, dark, crinkling and bemused. “Little Red Riding Hood,” he croons, cradling Sehun's face, and Sehun bites back a whimper, swallows thickly as the fingers move to cup his chin, tilt his face upwards. “You’re the most _awful_ temptation for a big bad wolf.”

And really there was no point in this. Really no justifying it. Really, Sehun really just—

"Little Red," Tao purrs, thumbing fondly at his bottom lip. He drags against him, skin catching on the fabric of Sehun's suddenly too-tight clothes. His tone is low, menacing, mocking.

Sehun's own wavers "How many throats have you torn out since we last met?"

"None," he hums, cradling his cheekbone. "I never have. You could be my first. Isn't that romantic? Is that what you want? How you want me? Just tell me what you want, pretty Little Red."

Sehun swallows back a gasp, and Tao's eyes are heavy on his. Tao threads his fingers through Sehun's hair, then, tilts his head back, to the point of pain—pleasure-pain—holds it there briefly as he presses his body flush with Sehun's. "I'm—I'm not—"

Naked, still naked, Tao grinds against him, hums again in approval. "That's right," he concedes, one hand snaking to his Sehun's ass this time, the other to his wrist. "Not Little Red. A _hunter_." Tao palms his ass before reaching just beneath, tugging his knife from from its holster. It clatters to the ground, hollow, resounding. Tao keeps his hand on Sehun's ass, tilts him bodily to press even closer, finger splaying, and it has slow tendrils of heat coursing through Sehun's veins. The fingers of Tao's unoccupied hand twist into the leather bracelet at Sehun's wrist, until the material is biting into his skin. Sehun hisses, and Tao relents. But he keeps his fingers there, thumb nail tracing over the engravings as he smiles, bemused. And it's not supposed—why isn't he— "A detective, right? Why don't you tell me what you've found? What had you coming back all the way here just for me?"

"Nothing," he wants to say. Or maybe, "Get away." But his tongue is thick in his mouth, and the words too heavy and awkward, lodged deep in his throat. And he doesn't miss the predatory gleam in Tao's eyes, the way that has his body overheating.

"Or is there something else, another reason you came?"

_To kill you_  
_To put you away_  
_To put an end to this awful, awful thing_  
_To fu—_

"I had hoped," Tao interrupts, words slow and seductive. "I've been wanting a taste of that forbidden fruit. And oh, I promise to keep you safe. Only bite as hard as you need."

His lips graze over Sehun's pulsepoint, in steady suck, and Sehun swallows thickly. His fingers thread through Sehun's hair, tilt for better access.

"Werewolves," Tao drawls, words scraping against Sehun's throat, “You know, we're used to being blamed for things we haven't done." And Sehun, even in his fear, arousal doesn't miss the heat, the anger behind those words. They're heavy with it, bitter, though falsely light, mocking. "But oh, I want this part to be true. To have had a werewolf hunter pinned beneath me just _so_. I want you to remember me, Little Red. I'm gonna eat you _alive_."

The words register with a slow curl of heat. Deep and distressingly potent.

And Tao, he is overwhelming like this. Body, presence, voice, scent. Musky, earthen, decidedly masculine, crowding into him. Sehun finds himself inhaling deeply without meaning.

Hand still tangled in Sehun's hair, Tao drags his nose in response, inhales deeply with deep groan of approval. Affected, he moans, the sound rich, dizzying. Sehun's cock twitches in interest, damningly. Swells.

This close, Sehun can feel the distinct outline of Tao's own cock, the distinct weight of it, too, dragging against his hip. And fuck, Tao, Tao was getting off on this, too. Fuck that made it worse.

"I want you, Little Red," he's saying. "Is that why you came back? Want me, too? Say—say yes."

Sehun is drunk on the heat of his breath, the scrape of his teeth, the wetness of his tongue, teasing, hot against the hollow of his throat. His lips drag as he continues. And there's the heady pulse of arousal, the extra burn of fear, shame. Sehun arches into the hardness pressed against him.

"Want to be mine?"

"Your mate?" Sehun tries, mocks. "Your fucktoy?" And Tao snickers.

“Want to tame me?” Tao laughs. “Want to cage me?” His knee drags across Sehun’s thigh. “You humans, you disgust me.” But the way his fingers are dancing, exploring Sehun's sternum, his throat, they belie his words. He's wanted, Sehun thinks, in spite of it. Wanted in the same way Sehun wants.

It's physiological, stimulus and response. And he's helpless to it. Tao grinds against him, more purposefully, drags his cock against the outline of Sehun's, and Sehun chases the friction with a low moan. Curses himself but still drags his fingers down Tao's back. Leverage, desperation. And the muscles flex beneath his skin.

He's losing, he's losing, he's lost.

Tao groans. "I want this," he laughs, strained, wrecked, and he presses even closer, fingers scalding against his jawline, caressing nonetheless. "Tell me no."

The word bounces around his tongue, skitters his way up his throat, dies as Tao looms over him, eyes heavy, hot, wanting. He wants.

“ _Tell_ me,” he repeats. “Little Red, tell me that you’re scared of the big bad wolf. Run away from me."

And really there's really no justifying what happens next.

Damnation.

Sehun's hand twists into Tao's hair instead, tugs him downwards.

Tao’s own fingernails scrape across his scalp, and Sehun arches into it with a wrecked desperation, chases the sting. Whimpers even as he crashes their mouths together.

There’s too much teeth. It’s too hot.

The tearing of fabric, flesh, too when Sehun rakes eager fingers down Tao’s biceps, moaning helplessly into Tao's mouth, urging him closer, tighter.

The hands against his hip are inhumanely strong, unrelenting, grounding. Tao drags away from his lips to mouth at his pulsepoint, and Sehun's sure it’s racing against Tao’s lips, helpless, telling in its desperation and arousal. Against his better nature, against all the training, the heavy morality that has been impressed upon him his whole life.

Sehun is aroused, desperate at the press of hard warmth alone, promising, wrong, and Tao is claiming, rending at his control press by press. He grinds enticingly, makes Sehun say it aloud.

Sehun spreads his legs, hears himself whimper please. Please, please, please. Take me.

It's not soft. Not romantic, the way he's taken. Not the way Sehun is used to.

Tao isn't careful. Not careful enough.

Inhuman strength as he flips Sehun over, bends him forward over the rotten table.

There will be bruises. Fingerprint-shaped around his hips, his navel, his ass. Fading hickies and bite marks on the nape of his neck, the jut of his shoulders. Sehun will wear the stains of this for days to come, longer for the shame.

Telling, damning, shameful, all the hotter for it.

As Tao spits into his palm, slick himself up, thrusts between his thighs.

And there's fury bleeding into the snap of his hips. And every fuck forward has him dragging against the underside Sehun's aching cock, growling into his ear.

Sehun balances himself on one trembling elbow, grinds his ass back with a low, wrecked moan. Gone so gone.

Tao's biting down on his neck, tugging at his hair. Sehun tips forward hard, arms scrambling, fingernails scraping at the rotten wood. Tao pulls him back by the hair, until Sehun is practically standing, whimpering and begging. Tao continues to fuck forward.

Immobile, but still so fucking _needy_. Ruined and broken. He slams his hips back towards every thrust.

The oil lamp shakes, tips, threatens to shatter with the force of Tao's pounding, relentless pace.

There's a snarl lodged deep in Tao's throat, growing in volume, pitch, hot and heavy near Sehun's ear. “Have to bite hard,” he rasps. “Here,” he continues, dragging his nose up along the column of Sehun's ruined, gasping throat. His lips graze in the most painfully tempting circuit, up and down, his teeth scraping as he pants. "Make you all fucking mine."

He couples the proposal with a particularly delicious thrust, harder, faster, heaving, hot. Sehun sobs, shivers. A writhing, whimpering mess.

Sehun is torn open, torn inside out, and somehow this makes sense. Somehow this is all he could ever want. To be held still like this, taken over and over again. Just like this.

"So, so hungry for me," Tao praises, mocks. His voice is a wrecked groan against the nape of Sehun's neck, his cock a dragging, devastating force against Sehun's own.

He's hungry. He's starved. And he's falling apart soon enough. All for him, pathetic and loud and panting.

Tao wraps his hands around Sehun’s cock, teeth grazing, moans increasing as he tugs and tugs and tugs.

"Harder," he hears himself beg. "Harder, faster."

And Sehun feels like he’s burning up, burning alive, consumed, completely consumed, as he bucks upwards desperately, cresting, coming.

And there's no justifying that either. The broken, helpless way Sehun cries out his name.

The way he continues to grind back, thighs squeezed tight, just to hear Tao's own ruin.

The way he tilts his ass back, groans in encouragement when Tao releases across his thighs.

There's no justifying it, and the poison of it—the want—is thick, thicker even on his tongue.

Ω

When Tao is finished with him, he's a wrecked, ruined thing. Writhing, broken, shattered, a heaving mess of loose limbs and indulged desire. Beautiful because of it, even panting, covered in come. _Perfect_ , just exactly how Tao needs him.

The shame will come soon enough, but right now, this hunter, beautiful and perfect, he's still hazy, fucked out, and in his post-orgasmic haze, he groans wetly, gropes for Tao. Clumsy but earnest, he reaches out for Tao's hand, grip loose, and Tao nuzzles into the long arch of the hunter's spine, licks once just to hear the hunter's breath hitch.

Softer than before, he's sure, but Tao can appreciate it now, hear it over the pounding in his own ears, the demanding pitch of the hunter's whines for more.

Tao noses his way up, hums against the nape of his neck, and the hunter is boneless, weak with want, releasing needier, breathier sounds. Soft, still. So soft. Soft as the hair tickling Tao's lips, the skin grazing his nose.

He pulls back just enough to appraise, turn the limp hunter in his arms. Mine, he thinks. All mine.

In the low light, Tao notes the tender areas around the hunter's hips, his ass, as the hunter shifts lazily in his arms. He'll bruise. He'll remember. He'll ache all the more.

And Tao, Joonmyun has always praised, is so _good_ at this, gauging what people need, delivering. Always so good at pleasing. And this hunter—this man had been so _eager_ , now sated, all the more pliant.

Easy to want, too. Pretty and wrecked in the aftermath, all flushed and sweaty and panting, come on his stomach, the back of his thighs

He'd begged Tao to do that, too, mindlessly, but no less desperately. He'd wanted with desperation, fervor, had taken in much the same way.

He had been soft, hesitant, skittish even, but he'd wanted it so _hard_ , so _punishing_. Had pled for it with the most wanton abandon. Begged, too, for Tao to take him harder, whimpered low and needy when Tao had scraped his teeth near his throat. Sought the danger, the thrill of it, after all. Needily, vocally, hot, so hot.

Tao had delivered. He's always been good at delivering. Cautious, like approaching a wild, wounded animal, make them come of their own volition before introducing leash, captivity, perdition.

Lost already, lost to the pull, the hunter seeks him out. Shy and unsure, stilted and stiff, his fingers trace Tao's shoulders, his chest. Linger as his lip catches between his teeth. The hunter's hands are loose, heavy around Tao's waist, and Tao lolls his head forward to mouth at the column of his throat. Lazy, purposeful, he scrapes his teeth, and the hunter whimpers, trembles against Tao's lips. Tao drags even harder, promising. And Tao can taste his helpless, gorgeous response, feel the weak way the hunter's cock swells against his thigh.

Obvious, so obvious. Easy, so easy.

He'd been more vocally opposed, but he'd fallen much faster, much much faster than the others Tao's pressed like this. Is staying longer than the others, too.

Tao licks his lips, licks the hunter's skin, assaulted with that scent anew. Sweet, hot, heady.

Tao nips at the warm, welcoming, fragrant skin. No fangs, just teeth. And the hunter lets out the most ruined moan. So loud and breathy and needy, and Tao does it once more. The response this time is even more wanton, Sehun melting back, boneless. But his grip, his grip has tightened painfully at the crown of Tao's hair. Holding him there. Urging him. Tao lets out a groan at the pathetic, dangerous, tempting way the hunter arches towards the teeth clenched near his throat. He'd done it earlier, too. Is doing it again.

Forbidden, forbidden for Tao, too, yet so easy. The boundary between right and wrong in these moments, these moments of abandon, controlled chaos, the boundary is so hazy. The wolf—the animal—it always wants more. Skin, heat, blood.

It's an easy enough character to fall into, a matter of indulging the wolf. Hedonism par excellence. Stripping down to pure, brutal _want_ , sweet, hot animal desire. Playing it up. It's about teasing, toeing, tearing apart piece by piece.

The hunter's fingers twist harder the longer Tao lingers, and Tao bites again. Harder this time. Marking this time. The hunter's body trembles, arches, grinding against Tao's bare thigh. And _fuck_.

Tao disengages with a low groan, shifts instead to suck on his jawline, mouthing his way up towards his ear. "One little bite," he breathes. "One little bite, Little Red, and you’ll be all mine. Just like me. Is that what you want after all?"

The hunter doesn't respond, just pants, his hips increasingly insistent, cock already halfhard against Tao's thigh. His legs splay open, thighs dragging in invitation against Tao's hips. Tao skates his palms up those long, lean, legs in slow, deliberate exploration. The hunter shivers, sighs, slides back, opening further.

Another round, so quickly, it's rare. Glutton, Tao thinks, amused. So greedy.

Faster, faster. This hunter falls, wants, demands faster, faster.

Tao licks along his neck, brushes his hand against the hunter's erection, teasing, light. The weight of it heavy, warm. It pulses in his grip, the hunter melts in his arms.

Again. He melts again.

Tao knows he'll spook soon enough. And he does. Heavy-lidded eyes widening suddenly, he jerks back, simultaneously shoves hard.

And ah yes, there it is. Sweet in it's own way, the awful, awful moment of realization. Dizzying and potent, sharp and tangy on Tao's tongue. It's thick, intoxicating, too.

The hunter gasps, twists back with a bitten off curse. Sharp angles, tight, tense limbs, he closes himself off. And Tao retreats with a lingering smirk, opts to watch his flustered fumbling.

♂

Twice spared, twice confused, Sehun scrambles to get his clothes on, smooths his hands down the fabric, ignoring all the while the bemused chuckling and smooth smooth movements of the werewolf he's just let—the werewolf he'd just _wanted_ to—

The pleasure had drowned it out, but fuck he just, how could he—

Sehun wipes fruitlessly, in disgust at his thighs, his stomach, can't find his underwear, spares a glance as he starts to tug on his jeans, and it's a mistake. Tao is still naked. Soft now, but no less magnificent. Solid and beautiful in the oil lamp's golden kiss.

Sehun, distracted, scans Tao's body. Appreciates. The places he's touched, the places he still _wants_ to touch. And Tao probably doesn't miss the way his eyes linger there, remember there. Smirking, mocking as he watches him through lowered eyelashes.

But Sehun is caught up once more, wonders blearily why he should move when he can just _stare_.

Thin, reedy, faint, so faint, a protest _Because it's **wrong**_

…when he just have this. Do. Do more than he's done.

_Because it's **wrong**_

When he can slide to his knees to suck Tao into his mouth. Bite down hard on his neck as he takes his tongue, his fingers, his cock.

When he can be bitten, marked, claimed.

More. Again. More.

_Because it's **wrong**_

But Sehun's hands are already falling limp at his side, jeans sliding to the ground as he regards him.

And it's wrong, Sehun knows it's wrong, but he still—

Tao raises his eyebrow, puckers his lips, taunting, and that animates Sehun again. Reminds him, fuck, reminds him.

That this is _precisely_ why he needs to leave. Why this particular trangression so fucking _wrong_.

Sehun tugs on his shirt, his jacket, scrambles as he zips, buttons. Ignores, pointedly ignores, the awful mistake he'd just made.

"Little Red," Tao calls, and Sehun turns, just in time to catch the knife Tao's tossed back at him. Blade-side down. "Don't forget your toys, darling."

Bold, so bold, he doesn't think Sehun would—could—kill him right now. Trusts him, inexplicably, not to hurt him for the awful thing he'd just tempted Sehun into doing.

Fingers white, tight, around the blade, Sehun blinks back at him for a long, long beat, feels the draw again, inexplicably strong, easy, easy. The blade bites into his skin, spares him from another mistake. He drops it into his pocket.

"Run on home," Tao chuckles darkly after him. "But please do come back. I'll be expecting you. Wanting you."

And Sehun stumbles out the door.

 

He breathes in big gulps of air, grounded and terrified and confused. He stills feels the phantom, insidious kiss, touch, desire. He aches. He's fucked. He's so fucking fucked.

There really isn't a protocol for this, as far as Sehun knows. He's never really been trained to expect this to happen. This _doesn't_ happen, not to hunters. To teen rebels, maybe. Self-destructive youth. But not to—never to hunters. Never to people like Sehun. And he would never have though that he'd end up wanting—wanting _still_.

He staggers to his car, cleans himself there, starts to cry as he scrubs at his itchy thighs, his bruised hips. He drives afterward in a daze.

He's operating under the false pretense, still, of finding Tao. Pretending he hasn't met, talked to, _fucked_ him.

So he hadn't logged this expedition in.

An early night, he'd told his supervisor, Hakyeon, instead. He had earned it, they agreed. He was going to maybe catch a drive in movie, eat a dinner burger, drink a milkshake. Turn in early.

~~Fuck a werewolf~~

_Fuck_ , fuck a fucking werewolf. How could he—

Hands shaking on the steering wheel, body trembling in his seat, Sehun shakes his head, focuses on the matters at hand.

Off duty, what he'd done this time, his mistake, had been off duty, off the clock. Of his own volition. There's a small comfort in that. The fact that he hadn't told anyone. The fact that he doesn't _have to_ go back.

There's no reason for it, beyond Sehun not wanting to be alone, alone with his thoughts, his memories, and his shame. No reason beyond Sehun needing affirmation, needing things to make sense.

The building is looming, imposing, scraping at the sky in the most self-important, self-assured way. A bright beacon of light, grounding, a concrete structure of hope, absolution as Sehun buries his face in his hands, bites back a sudden sob.

And there—yes, there things make sense.

 

Sehun’s sneakers pound against the pavement, and he remembers who he is, what side he's on, why what he did was so _wrong_. And why the desire for more, tickling at the back of his conscience, burning in all the areas the werewolf had touched, why that is wrong, too.

Late Saturday night, it's quiet, mostly empty, the officers out on the field, doing something. Something positive.

The security guard at the door offers the slightest bow in greeting, and Sehun returns it numbly, finds his way to his station. He plops down, bites back another sob, smothers a sudden shudder.

Sitting there in his desk chair, head balanced on his still-trembling fingers. He collects his thoughts, weighs the fact. His actions, they seem all the more impossible, all the more awful like this.

And Sehun allows himself to feel that, too. Wallows fully. Alone at his cubicle, he loses himself in it.

Useless. He's useless. Desperate. Easy. Pathetic. Incompetent.

Beyond the shame, the awful, terrible scrutiny, there's a deeper drive, bone-deep, the desire to prove himself. Belong. Because Sehun is still, markedly, a legacy riding on his father’s name, his glory, and Sehun thinks he deserves a chance, too.

Sehun wants to be taken seriously, wants to belong. Wants to make a name for himself. Didn't want this. Not, not like this.

But he can, he will come back from this, he decides, turning on his computer, gathering his files. The notes on shelved cases, pertinent threats. Wolves of interest, not just of intrigue, not just objects of lust.

Sehun can fall back into routine, undo the wrong.

A

Tao smells wrong again. Tastes wrong, too. Wronger, saturated, _thick_ with it.

Fear, climax, fear. Salty-sweet, lingering until Joonmyun intervenes. Kisses him hard, sucks him into his mouth, works him open, fucks the smell, the taste of foreign, hunter, out of Tao's trembling system.

It's so ephemeral, so inconsequential, and Tao falls into him. Seamless, flawless, perfect, they're perfect. Have been since that first night, when Joonmyun had seen him, smelled him, tasted him. _Home_. Tao is relief, release.

They have a plan, a procedure. This dream of his—this vision—it's awful, shaky, draining. It has Joonmyun playing at unmated, uninitiated, unimportant. Has Tao seducing hunters, wringing them tight and sexy and low for more information. Has them inviting unwanted attention, intervention—those dead bodies, those choked resources.

Clumsy, claiming, unsure, but through it all Tao is a sure, a concrete, a security, an absolute, gravity. Tao is here. Tao is his, and that grounds Joonmyun through it, fortifies him through it, too. Completes him.

He's panting on Joonmyun's chest now, and Joonmyun can still taste it—taste him—on the hollow of Tao's heaving throat. Nuzzles with a lazy moan as he licks even harder, bites down until Tao is gasping, arching, hardening again.

His again.

His _always_.

♂

Werewolves, ideaologically, they can be further divided into 3 subsets, existing on a wide sort of spectrum. Assimilationists, cooperationists, anarchists.

Assimilationsts, they're the most palatable. If not a little ingratiating. Traitors, Sehun has heard him them pronounced. Selfish, self-serving, almost universally maligned. Tokens, his father had preached. Important for it. More us than them, Sehun's been taught. But still not—still never to be trusted. They are as close to tamed as werewolves can manage, but still feral and awful and dangerous underneath. Still one snap short. ( _Jinyoung, his family, they’d been assimationist, after all. Remember that._ )

They have college degrees, live among their human neighbors, make frequent apologies for their werewolf breathern. Lobby against them, when necessary. They argue in favor of curfews, monitoring, self-segregate during Moons.

Cooperationists are the great majority. Isolated, concentrated in the vast, vast woods, resentful, disenfranchised, but obedient, still.

And anarchists, they're the dangerous ones. Not acting on their words. _Yet_. But Jinyoung, he'd been a rallying call for them, too. Jinyoung and the brutal, brutal revenge he had inspired. Jinyoung and how easily, how efficiently their kind were killed.

All the more secretive, they hide behind masks, send anonymous threats, make demands, gather, protest. They're largely unorganized, splintered and fragmented, but a breakaway cult forms. Calls themselves Growl, the epicenter of threat, public enemy number 1.

Sehun has been chasing them, too. Chasing them before everything got mixed up, confusing. He's been bribing informants—lonely, outcast, desperate college wolves, self-serving assimilationists. Tapping phones. Wandering further and further and further into the woods where they reside.

It's a penance of sorts. An apology, trying to cleanse himself of his poor choices.

The weeks, they pass in the hazy, fever pitch of purpose, action, chase, retreat.

Tao's actions are still on the news. Another killed. 21. They show a picture of her. Pretty, curvy, oversized glasses, and a bright, bright grin. She'd been studying Criminal Justice, they said. Volunteered at the local animal shelter. A maid had found her. She was survived by two brothers, one sister.

Then another. 22, a man this time. Tall, thin, a Criminal Justice major, too, just one semester shy of finishing his degree. He'd been a soccer fan, had had hopes of joining the department when he'd graduated.

Random acts of violence. Part of a string. The brutality of the attack, the solemn newscaster says, has the Hunter’s Department connecting them to the previous murders, citing a rogue wolf.

7 total. Sehun drops an anonymous hint at the station. Hears through the office grapevine that they found nothing there. No house. No wolf. No clues.

And maybe, maybe Sehun fever dreamed the whole thing. Dreamt up, too, the long-faded bruises, bites. Maybe, maybe it was some test, and he, in denying himself, passed.

It's better this way, even if Sehun keeps touching himself at night, in the morning, in the shower, throughout the day on his days off. Even if the fantasies _have_ become more elaborate. Being held down. Bitten. Hurt. Fingers at his throat. Or in his mouth. Or in his ass. Searing and possessive, ruining all the same.

Yes it is better to deny, to forget, to never again. He resolves, decides.

Sehun resolutely ignores the damning memories, the damning curiosity.

 

After the latest murders, some of the younger rookies—the college recruits—had gotten spooked. Left. Sungjae, Youngjae, Minwoo, the Jo Twins.

It'd become too real, they'd said. Too dangerous. And too not what they wanted or imagined or hoped for.

And the Department has been trying to build up morale in the aftermath. Appease. Appeal. Assuage.

The mentor program, that had been part of the Department's infrastructure since it's official creation some 80 years ago. Since from before it had become as powerful as it now is, before when it wasn't funded by victims' right organizations, public money, rich patronage. From before it had the near unilateral support of its citizens. From before, from the very start, when it was a collection of would-be hunters, would-be-heroes. It had been an apprenticeship, then, almost, hunter and hunter-in-training chasing werewolves, then retreating into their charmed safehouses, bequeathing titles, breaking apart, then finding new potentials. Lather, rinse, repeat.

It's been there since its very conception. Mentorship, support for young hunters as a vague ideal, but recently they've been attempting to build up morale. Hosting barbecues, parties, instituting a weekly hunter-rookie meetup of sorts at local bars and grills. Not mandatory, but highly encouraged, an attempt at keeping rookies and hunters alike grounded, connected. Drinks, fried chicken, nachos, all company card sponsored, company approved.

Hunters, they're kinder there. Teasing, patronizing in an affectionate way, straining on their tiptoes, short as most of them are to rest their elbows on Sehun's shoulder, pat the top of his head to muss up his hair.

Sehun starts to attend. He plays darts, pool, flirts, sliding away all the while from the drunken, fatherly caresses of his superiors, glassy-eyed and so so fond.

And there's a type of absolution in it for Sehun. A type of rewiring.

Forgetting, he's forgetting. Replacing, he's replacing.

It's enough. Enough to have him sitting through Baekhyun's mocking, lilting laughter, Taekwoon's silent, silent judgement, Jaehwan’s, Wonshik's off-color jokes.

And it's working, apparently, has been on other rookies as himself. And it's easier to lose himself, pretend he doesn't still stroke himself to the awful mental image of fucking himself back on Tao's cock.

He gets lucky one night, gets as far as pressing a tall man into a bathroom stall door, grinding down as the man moans softly into his neck, scrapes his teeth in a passing caress. A distressingly familiar caress. And Sehun finds himself stumbling back, eyes sweeping over the man's dark, dark, dazed eyes, sparing a glance to his red mouth, apologizing profusely. He's just—not tonight, he's sorry.

 

It's working. It's working.

Ω

They'd gotten a head's up. _Hakyeon_. They'd had to abandon that house, abandon that endeavor. Abandon them all together. It's getting too dangerous, Joonmyun had decided. They still don't know how this wolf keeps _guessing_ , but the fact that hunter thought him—

And oh that hunter, the ugly, hot, desperate part of him still remembered, wanted. The pull, it tugged at him, too. He'd been careless. Hadn't shielded himself. Indulged too much, too fast. Mine, he keeps thinking. Mine, he keeps wanting.

Thwarted, not fully realized, cut off much too soon, it still haunts. The weakest, but most persistent memory. Intruding, intrusive, Joonmyun can smell the confused arousal on him, takes care of it in time. And Tao sobs into his sheets, scrapes his nail as he hangs off his wonderful, beautiful, perfect, perfect knot.

A

There's more time now, less interruption.

Tao, on the nights he isn't baiting (he hasn't baited for a _while_ ), watches the young. Has obvious favorites, but spoils them all the same. Loves them all the same.

He sings them lullabies. Mushes carrots and peas. Takes them to play in the woods. Makes snacks, mudpies, little houses of sticks. Tao plays find and seek, peak-a-boo, airplane, house. He tries to teach them their shapes, their numbers, their animals, their Chinese tones, too.

He feeds them, clothes them, bathes them, monopolizes almost of their time. He's ever reluctant to let them go. Finds the most purpose in his moments with them.

He curls up into Joonmyun extra affectionate afterwards. Smelling of them. Mother's milk, powder, soil, pine needles, the future, their dreams.

Tao, Joonmyun knows, could never want for anything else. Anybody else. Joonmyun can feel it, the staggering depths of Tao contentment, the urgency of love for him, Joonmyun, his mate. But beyond that, too, there is still that elemental ache, a heart too big, a love so vast. They can't have children. Not together. And Joonmyun knows that the paternal urge. Potent, too. All the more potent for Tao.

These children, these babies, they are like his own. Surrogates, in a way. And Tao always makes a point of getting one last kiss, one last hug, one last "I love you."

Today, he smells of Chanshik. (It's always, mostly Chanshik. The slowest, the smallest, the chubbiest. Sharp eyes, big ears, a winning grin, persuasive pout, Tao always falls so easy). Also, of the walnut pancakes he'd made them for breakfast, the tuna sandwiches he'd made them for lunch, rice, meat. Food that Joonmyun, as his Suho, his Alpha provides. And Tao always makes an entire affair of thanking him for, murmuring husky _Alpha, my Alpha_ 's in between slick glides of his swollen lips. _So good at protecting, so good at providing_. Voice laced with longing, eyes burning in desire.

In the older days, Alphas hunted for meat, in wolf-form, farmed for produce in man-form. And packs would die from malnutrition, often, their human bodies weak, sickly. In these days, there are grocery stores, currency, if a pack has access to it. Joonmyun's family, they'd been more ingratiating, sellouts. They have money. This pack, their pack, they survive on those prior sins, those prior investments.

Tao is recounting how he helped them make a birdfeeder, telling Joonmyun how Sunwoo, Junghwan are gonna go to kindergarten soon. How he—Tao—is gonna miss them most of all. More than their parents, he thinks, really, because Tao spends the most time with them, after all. And he's been readying them for this. And he's so _proud_.

He's still fully-clothed, loose fabric and soft hair and lingering touches, and Joonmyun draws him closer, inhaling deeply. And home, too. He smells like home, like _mine_.

♂

And Sehun makes it another week—7 whole days, 5 weeks total—before relenting. Buckling. Failing, failing, failing.

He doesn't even know where to look. Wanders and wanders and wanders, stumbling through the woods, trembling in the brittle cold.

The rocks crunch beneath his shoes, a twig snaps, and there's a sudden warmth, a suffocating, choking solidity pressing him to a tree. And Sehun is assaulted with the smell, the want.

Naked, he's naked. Sehun can feel him. Grazing his thigh.

"You destroyed it," he accuses, "our sanctuary. Our special home, Little Red. I made you come there. So _hard_. It was special."

Sehun swallows hard, gulps audibly. He can barely make him out like this, in the weak, pale moonlight. He squints because he _wants_ to make him out. Wants to see him. The sharp cut of his eyes, the teasing smirk he can _hear_ in his voice. "I didn’t—"

"Yes, you did," he corrects smoothly. "I know you did, Little Red. _Oh Se hun_."

Sehun jerks back, his head pounding painfully against the tree trunk, groaning. Patronizing, Tao coos, cups his cheek, whispers his name again. His _real_ name. And Sehun's head turn sharply away, because he hadn’t—

Tao's hand shifts, closes around his throat, holding him down, thumbing at his adam’s apple to urge his face forward. His other traces a familiar, appraising trail to his thigh. His knife. "You have to stop bringing this," Tao breathes softly, and Sehun can practically taste the words with how close they are. "It hurts my feelings, you know. Makes me think that maybe, maybe you don't want this, too."

Sehun opens his mouth to speak, assert precisely that point—wanting, it's _not_ why he came here, it's not, it can't be, he can't actually want to—;not, not _again_ —

But Tao presses down harder, makes Sehun gasp. He nuzzles into Sehun's hair, breath hot at his temple, hand closing around his thigh, urging it up, out, around Tao's waist. He grinds down like that, the most glorious friction, and Sehun _moans_. Helplessly.

"Don't lie to me, Little Red," he insists. He rocks, and Sehun can't help but chase the movement, his throat bobbing against Tao's grip, head lolling back to the side with a small, desperate, distressed sound. " _Give in_ to me."

Sehun does. Is, giving, giving, giving, as he falls further and further into the intoxication of desire. Hardens, bucks back, whines. His control is so threadbare, ripping at the seams.

"I have missed you, you know. I eat boys, girls like you for breakfast," Tao croons. "But you're so _sweet_. The sweetest. And you make the most _beautiful_ sounds. When you're _panting_ for it." There's derision there.

Heat. Shame.

But he is. He hates it, but he is.

"Others," he protests weakly, voice reedy, high, so high. "You with those—You _killed_ —"

Tao chokes back a laugh. "No," he insists.

But Sehun, he also has to insist, too, vulnerable, aroused, trembling, desperate as he is.

Tao drops his hands to grip his hips, force him harder. His legs, they wrap around Tao of their own volition, seek leverage, seek heat, pleasure as Tao's lips whisper, graze over Sehun's.

"All that matters, Little Red, is right here. Right now. You and me. We're the _only_ ones in the world right now."

Tao drags his nose, cradles again, damns again.

"You came to be _fucked_. By me." Tao's tone is even, measured, light, unaffected. "Want to claim you," he chants. "Want to _fuck_ you."

As if knowing that those words are just _exactly_ what he needs. Ruin, they ruin.

Sehun's eyelashes flutter, his body bows, and he tries to mask the need, the rasp of desire in his own voice.

_It's a dream. We're the only ones who matter. It's okay. It's okay. Doesn't even matter that Sehun had craved, sought him out. Again. Once more. A habit, at this point. A pattern of behavior. Doesn't matter because it's a dream_

" _Yes_."

And as far as mistakes are concerned, Sehun decides, he wants to make this one memorable. Make it _count_.

It's slower this time, their kiss, more thorough, but less controled. Sehun twists a fist into Tao's hair, drags him forward. He doesn't miss the soft chuckle as he seals their mouths together, channels all of his want, his anger. It's bruising, rough, almost violent. Sehun nips at Tao's bottom lip, tugs sharply at Tao's hair, angles his mouth pliant as Sehun thrusts his tongue inside.

And he wants, he wants, he wants. He takes, he takes, he takes.

Tao wrests control back soon enough, lips, tongue insistent, hips pressing just right, and Sehun's chokes on a moan, mouth useless, open, as his body jerks forward. Pure instinct, damning need.

"Want to feel more of you," Tao is saying, voice unnervingly steady. "More and more." He glides his hand down Sehun's heaving chest, nimble fingers dancing down his clothed navel to his tented crotch, and Sehun's head crashes back once more with an unsteady moan.

"Yes," he repeats, hisses.

Sehun can feel him smirk, feel the burn of it against his jawline.

Tao pulls back slightly, and his golden eyes glow, just briefly. Sehun melts, head lolling to the side, eyes clenching shut.

"Don't run away," he breathes. "Not from me. Not again." He punctuates the words with a particularly slow, luxurious caress, fingers dragging perfectly along his aching erection, catching on the flared tip of Sehun's cock, circling there lazily. "Don't leave, Little Red."

And Sehun doesn't. Not right away.

And with Tao's lips, his teeth, dragging along his collarbone, it's so easy to agree to one more time. Another after that. A motel, Tao is saying. A motel, next Saturday, so he can spread him open, just like Sehun had said that very first night. And Sehun's stripped bare, to the core, of shame, propriety, sense. He's pure, pure need, agreeing readily, desperate, chanting "yes" over and over again as Tao's hands slides down his zipper, his boxers, to grip at his cock.

It's the first time Sehun's been touched in a while, and Tao's touch is so _appraising_ , tracing as if to memorize the heft, the girth, his fingers dragging teasingly along the underside as he chuckles, hums.

Sehun whimpers, bites his lip hard to smother the sound as he tips his hips up. For more. The shift has his shirt, his sweater pushing up, and the bark scrapes against the skin of his trembling back. It rubs it raw.

Tao's palm is warm, soft, steady, but dry—too dry—as it tugs. Tao spits into his palm, and Sehun fights a sudden shudder, as Tao strokes again. The glide so much smoother, slicker, and Tao's thumb teases at the slit of his clock, flicks at the base, teasing over his balls.

A helpless sound manages to slip through, and Sehun's head crashes back, neck baring, body seizing before writhing forward insistently. And Tao pants into his ear, bites down on the lobe.

He presses even closer, then, shifts, cock pressing against his. He takes them both into his hold. The flesh is heavy, heady heat catching, dragging against his own. And for the first time that night, Tao moans. Loud, breathy.

It's still cold, punishingly so, but Tao's body, his cock, the awful beautiful things they are doing, they serve to warm him. Distract him.

Hot, he's so hot.

Skin slick, body fucking _thrumming_ , Sehun is burning alive.

Still blind, hypersensitive, Sehun is acutely aware of every broken, breathy sound Tao releases. Close, like this. Pinned, like this. Sehun writhes forward into it to provoke even more reactions. Tao shudders, licks up his jawline, quickens the pace of his strokes.

Faster, tighter, hotter, harder, and he tilts is head downward, presses it into Sehun's sternum, lips dragging there, hair, moans tickling at Sehun's chin. And Sehun's hands twist there, ground themselves there as he continues to fuck upwards, against Tao's fingers, his cock.

Tao scrapes his teeth, punishingly slow then, and Sehun whimpers in protest. Begs.

"You're so good, so docile, my Little Red," Tao mocks, strained. "Tamed and eager for me. You _love_ this, don't you?"

“I fucking hate you. Want to fucking kill you,” Sehun insists, _moans_ , and Tao only swivels his wrist sharply, drags his thumb faster. In punishment, to prove a point. Fast, so fast. Sehun pitches, bites down. Helpless as ever. Eager as ever.

"Fuck me first, though. You want to fuck me so fucking _badly_ , don't you, Little Red?"

Tao's laugh, it's strained, weak. He buries his face in Sehun's neck, drags his teeth, chants "So delicious" against the trembling skin over and over again. He bites down, and Sehun's sneakered feet scramble against the forest floor, catching on leaves, twigs, soil, as he comes, claws, cries out.

Tao whimpers against his throat moments later, bites into his skin, and Sehun wishes he could see, then. Be witness to him falling apart.

And that thought—that thought alone—is an awful type of admission. An awful type of prolonged wanting, prolonged needing. It hasn't become less potent. It isn't going away.

Tao continues to mouth at the tender skin of Sehun's neck as he comes down from the high, and Sehun absently strokes his hair, holding tight, holding fast.

Tao drops him gingerly to the floor, post-recovery, retreats just slightly. Sehun gropes in the darkness, still overcome with that tender, heartaching, damning need for skin. Need for warmth in the afterglow. Tao's laughter is warmer, weaker. As he complies easily, lets himself be held.

Tao is still naked, Sehun still mostly dressed, softening cock hanging out of his pants, clothing and hair probably askew. Tao cups his face, kisses him slowly, smiles into it softly before pulling away, resting his forehead against Sehun's. Sehun chases the warmth of his lips, is rewarded with another soft, soft kiss. Chaste and distressingly affectionate, disconcertingly ill-placed, considering the circumstances.

"How about we stop pretending we both don't want this, Little Red?" Tao proposes easily, deceptively, damningly soft, still.

And Sehun is falling again, falling fast.

Sehun hums his assent as he pulls him back to his lips, deepening it, moaning into it, relishing in the opportunity to explore the plush, wet warmth of Tao's curved mouth. Sehun melts into the warm solidity at his front, his fingers threading through Tao's hair, his mouth tilting to better the angle.

And Sehun wishes he were on a bed, wishes that they could kiss like this until they passed out, wake up tangled in each other only to kiss, touch again. Over and over again. Not stopping until their lips are bruised and aching.

But they don't have that luxury right now, and Tao retreats soon enough. Too soon. He eases Sehun down, kisses him squarely on the mouth before speaking again, lips grazing his. "There's a hotel near here," he starts. "By the old diner. What do you say, Little Red? Let's plan this better next time. Next week, around this time?"

Sehun nods slowly, whispers a weak "yes" as his back slides down the tree trunk, arms still searching out Tao's form.

"Somewhere soft," Tao breathes, tracing his jawline. "So I can spread you all the way open. _Swallow you whole_."

And then he's gone.

And the moonlight is too naked, the stars to bright, the air too open, for Sehun to feel shame yet. Even as he shifts to tuck himself back into his pants. The evidence of what he's done, once again, on his skin. His navel, this time. Warm come sluices across his skin, itches, too, as he wipes it with his hands, cleans them against his still trembling denimed thigh.

He stumbles to his car.

And he doesn't shake in his seat. Doesn't drive back to work to collect his thoughts. Doesn't feel shame when he showers that night, tugs himself to the completion at the memory of Tao's warm, calloused palms, his sharp, sharp teeth. And it's not a nightmare, not really, when he dreams of Tao once more. The glow of his eyes, the press of his hands, the heft of his cock.

He gets the distinct impression that he's stumbling, falling, falling, falling deeper and deeper.

A

There's a triumphant curl in Tao's smile that night, an increasingly familiar smell on his skin. Less fear now, less shame, just pure arousal. His, the hunter's scent, climax, rich and heavy on Joonmyun's tongue. Thick and lingering long afterward.

Effective, it's effective.

Working, it’s working.

♂

The anarchist wolves, they give themselves a concrete purpose, a symbol, too. They unmask their leader, one Kikwang. Small, though handsome, there's boldness, confidence, conviction in the tilt of his chin, the set of his eyes, as he declares himself the Alpha of the Growl pack, the _liberator_. Voice low, eyes hard, he enumerates their grievances: higher surveillance, stricter curfews, segregation, inequality. Above all wolf subjugation. These are the circumstances that radicalize, these are injustices that demand fixing. They have tried through peaceful means. They have failed through peaceful means. He'll fight to the death, he promises in that grainy, spotty VHS he sends to the Department, dedicate his life to their cause. "You cried so long, so hard for that little girl. One little girl. Oh, if you could only imagine the death cries to follow. Cease your practices, or there will be blood."

(Lee Kikwang, 27, none, A, 13, Growl, apparently)

He'd grown up in this area. Played soccer, baseball in high school. Went through 2 years of university, studying engineering before dropping out. He’d been hospitalized with some severe unnamed illness for weeks, had disappeared soon after. No problems with the law thus far. No activism while on campus. A blip, the most inconsequential wolf. Now public Enemy #1.

He gets his own folder after that announcement, his own detective, his own wanted posters, his own news headline. Platform ad infinitum, words looping over and over again on the networks. "Or else."

They send a letter soon after, make a vaguer, even broader threat. All that stand in their way. Wolves, humans alike.

And the Department can't possibly ignore their words.

The other wolves—cooperationists, assimilationists, less vocal anarchists alike&—they're caught up in the flurry of movement, too. They report higher incidences of violence, turning on each other. Two alphas killed, replaced, three packs arrested under suspicions.

There had been talks recently, after the string of murders, talks of treaties. Official agreements. All the packs sending delegates, their leaders, to negotiate new terms, distance themselves from the actions. Agreeing, at times, to higher monitoring, perpetual department presence on wolf territory. Stricter curfews, more outwardly obvious marks of lycanthrophy—badges, special necklaces and bracelets, maybe&—so people know to be wary, know to stay safe and away.

The Department, the civic government, they have envoys, spies within wolf territory, too. Both bribed and salaried. They're pressed, asked, too, but have no information.

And it has the Department sending hunters—Sehun, too—into the thick of the woods. Armed, charmed, stronger, scarier stuff, improvised, undiluted spells, guns. Shivering in the dead of winter, following fruitless scent trails, searching desperately for safehouses, for clues.

It's a hard, hard reminder of the conflict in place. The utter frailty of their peace. What Sehun's job entails, demands.

And in the shuffle, in the madness, Sehun isn't really given a chance to dwell, reflect.

 

Friday arrives.

 

And Sehun's overcome with a delayed sense of dread, as he reflects on what he's about to do, what he's _done_.

A hotel, Tao had suggested, a hotel after they'd both admitted that they _wanted_ this. A _hotel_ , Tao insisting all the while that he wanted to eat Sehun alive but in a purely sexual way. Even though Sehun's interviewed hotel owners, hotel maids, hotel guests, poured over hours of CCTV footage. And he'd been thrice spared at this point, but still, still, he _knows_ better. Should know better. Why had he agreed?

 _Because of intrigue. Because of sex. Because he doesn't want to resent, to need, to wonder, to regret_.

Were those reasons enough? Good reasons enough?

No. Yes. Maybe.

Sehun briefly, wisely maybe, contemplates bringing a gun. Ending it once and for all. But he has to check those out. File a report. And he doesn’t—no he doesn't really want that level of scrutiny. Doesn't want to hurt Tao either.

He wants more than anything to see this through. _Come at Tao's hand once more_.

Saturday, he cleans his apartment, separates his recycling, does his laundry, and hangs his pants, his sweaters to dry around the apartment.

He decides to pack his knife, still. Then hovers, worries over his appearance. Stops at a convenience store. And there's a painful prickling along the nape of his neck, the low, heavy thrum of anticipation singing in his veins.

His conscious still shrieks that this is wrong. That he shouldn't be here. But it's getting easier to ignore.

 

Sehun brings condoms this time, a small bottle of lube. He doesn't allow himself to think of what that means that he's seeking this out now. Seeking out even more. Lets the muted shame burn hot and potent in his chest as he's ushered inside, led by the waist into the hotel room. Kissed breathless against the ugly white door. Avoiding all the while the CCTV, the windows and doors.

There's calculation, premeditation, further damnation.

"What do you want from me, Sehun?" Tao jokes, strained, labored, so so close that Sehun can feel his breath, taste his words. Dizzy on the grazing, barely there pressure of kiss-swollen, kiss-moistened lips.

"I want—" he starts, stutters, stumbles

And Tao's chuckle of amusement is low, dark. "I _know_." He tilts his head, and Sehun's mouth falls open with a quiet sound of want. "I know. Me, too. I will possess you."

In the soft, ambient light, the pale, pale moonlight, the lamp’s golden, romantic glow, Tao has him pinned to the wall. Hand at his shoulder, at his hip, clenching painfully tight. Immobile, vulnerable, just exactly what Sehun wants.

Electricity courses through Sehun's body, prickling and pulsing beneath his skin. It's delicious, this heavy forbidden, wrong, wrong thing. Wronger now. Wronger yet.

"Give it to me, then," he breathes back. And Tao's eyes flash gold. Not human. Not fully. Fingers tightening as he slams him again, lips crashing together.

It's pathetic, maybe, the needy, needy sound that Tao manages to draw forth from Sehun's mouth, swallow down whole.

Tao's hands fall from his shoulders to his waist, dragging Sehun forward, fitting himself between Sehun's spread legs to grind down hard, claiming with his body as his mouth takes and takes and takes.

Sehun chokes on a moan as Tao tilts his head sharply, sucks hard on his bottom lip, sucks it swollen, sensitive.

He's wrecking. He's wrecking. He's wrecking. Pinning, plumbing, pressing harder, harder, harder.

And it's _searing_ the pressure of nimble fingers at his waist, the drag of a clothed cock against his own, the sliding, slick heat of Tao's tongue, and the shame, the anticipation, the arousal as Tao tears at Sehun's clothes to get at more skin. Tao's mouth burns a trail from neck to collarbone to nipple, and Sehun's hands tangle in Tao's hair, urging him harder, pitching when Tao drags his tongue, scrapes his teeth.

Oh _fuck_. Oh _fuck_.

"What loud moans, Little Red," Tao teases, and Sehun just tugs harder, hazily aware of the way that Tao's entire body arches towards the move, fluid, desperate almost. It's a strange, visible, visceral, vocal response. Tao's eyelashes flutter, kiss along Sehun's trembling navel as he falls to his knees, mouths along his skin. His hands, they burn still, finger tips dancing over his thighs, tilting so Sehun's pressing hard and needy against Tao's sternum. Grinding mindlessly. "Tao," he moans.

"What's this?" he breathes, tracing absently over the outline of Sehun's knife, then the outline of his condoms, his lube, his cock.

"For you," Sehun manages, voice strained, as Tao cups him, drags the heel of his palm lengthwise against his cock once, twice.

"This," Tao purrs, lingering on the first, "This is not welcome here." His hand shifts, grazes. The blister of condoms. "But this" the lube "and this" his cock "and most _definitely_ this, these are welcome. _Wanted_. I want you."

“Then maybe," Sehun urges, mouth parting on a gasp as he wriggles into the feather light pressure, pleasure. "Maybe you should fuck me."

Tao smiles, lips dragging enticingly against his tingling skin, and he's doomed.

"Get on the bed. Naked. All fours."

Sehun shivers as he complies, trembles at the raspy quality of Tao's command.

"Bend forward," Tao intones against the nape of his neck, words warm, wet, wrecked, too, in their own way, wrecked with just as much want, and Sehun bends so easily, eagerly, fingers clenching tight in the bleach-white sheets. Tao gropes for his ass, squeezes. He spares a kiss, too, scraping, succulent, slow. Has Sehun moaning again. Even louder. The material of his pants, shirt, scrape, chafe against Sehun's own clothes.

Sehun twists an arm back to drag him closer.

Tao kisses again, longer, harder, a suck punctuated with a bite, as he peels them off. Sehun’s shirt had been discarded somewhere near the door, and his pants and boxers are wrestled down his legs, kicked near the foot of his bed. And it's even hotter when Tao's clothed body teases over Sehun's bared, sensitive skin, fingers tracing, repositioning all the while.

Tao noses up his spine, bites down on the jut of his shoulder as he works a slicked finger inside. Curls, drags, gentle in it, testing. So unlike how he's been up until this point, and Sehun fights to keep from collapsing at the fleeting pressure, arms trembling as he drinks it all in.

He's confident always, arrogant, teasing, but draped over Sehun right now, he's soft, almost unsure. Sehun doesn't miss the trembling in his hands, his voice.

Affected, he's affected, even as he thrusts shallowly, whispers about how good and tight it will be when he's buried _deep_ inside.

And the whisper soft stimulation coupled with the soft promises, still unfulfilled promises, has Sehun pressing back harder, arching needily, whining loudly.

Tao is clumsy, almost, a little uncoordinated, a little too eager and needy, too, his clothed erection dragging in tiny little bucks, panting into his earlobe as Sehun moans.

Tao shifts further forward, speaks against his skin as he eases another inside, scissors them open, swivels before grazing with a third. Slow, so slow. Shy, hesitant, though still breathtakingly thorough.

His words, though, his words are less shy, less hesitant.

"Gonna make it so good for you, my fragile Little Red," he breathes. "Gonna fuck you so slow you're begging for more." Sehun pitches forward with a soft, desperate sound, and Tao smiles against his skin, seizing on his response, reveling in it.

Tao continues in his description.

He's gonna have Sehun biting back moans. Gonna have his entire body quivering. He's gonna ruin him for anybody else.

_Please, please, please—_

Sehun melts forward with a whimper, bites down onto the bleached sheets. Presses back though, fucks himself back on those searching, searing touches, as Tao bites, groans along his spine, spearing until he finds that _spot_.

He abuses it, prods and prods and prods until Sehun can't think past the hot hot pleasure. His eyes clench shut, galaxies, supernovas dancing behind his eyelids. Awful, awful moans spilling from his parted lips.

Tao bites down hard as Sehun clenches around his fingers, whimpers loudly and provocatively about wanting his cock right now. Please. Right now. Fuck.

Sehun's openly sobbing for it by the time Tao withdraws his fingers, tears of pleasure streaming down his face, his entire frame trembling in want, in ruin.

Tao retreats long enough to sheath his cock, long enough for Sehun to whine helplessly for him. Before he's teasing at Sehun's entrance, the flared tip of his cock stretching in the most filthily perfect way before he's pressing pressing pressing inside.

It's the sweetest surrender, the most satisfying indulgence. Pleasure of the worst, most damning kind.

It's overwhelming, hot, and Sehun writhes back, pure sensation, stripped to the most instinctive want. He moves with a needy clumsiness before Tao shoves him down, drags him by the hips, takes completely over. He goes _hard_. Fucks him right into that squeaky box spring with the most arousing, painfully perfect abandon.

The pleasure wracks through Sehun, steals his breath, his conscience, his sanity. Replaces it with pure, pathetic, potent desire.

Tao grinds hard, hipbones smacking against Sehun's ass, cock catching in the most deliciously, devastatingly, damningly perfect way.

There will be bruises again. Fleeting, delicious, forbidden reminders. He wants. He wants. He wants.

 _Harder, faster, just split me in two_ , he hears himself pleading.

_Break me_  
Break me  
Break me  
Own me  
Ruin me 

_I'm already wrecked beyond repair._

Tao _does_ , and Sehun's moans are disjointed, stuttering out of his mouth in a broken half-pant as Tao drives him all the harder, fiercer, more fervent.

Sehun cries out, releases a jagged garbled version of Tao's name, and Tao bites down on his shoulder, growls into his skin. Pants into it, too.

 _Werewolf_ , Sehun's pleasure-fogged mind supplies. _A werewolf is fucking into you so hard, so fast, so perfect, that you're sobbing for it, begging him to never fucking stop_.

Sehun’s—he's really fucked up. Fucked over. Fucking. He's fucking. Back back back.

Tao abandons his station at Sehun's hips to brace one hand on the rocking headboard, glide the other down to Sehun's cock.

And he twists and strokes, continues to fucks into him with an overwhelming precision. Sehun is quivering through climax so soon. Claimed, collapsing.

And there's exhilaration, a different type of claiming in the soft, involuntary, horribly needy sound Tao releases, too as he crashes forward suddenly, stutterfucking through climax.

Tao pitches with it. His sudden, violent orgasm overtaking him, forcing the breath out of Sehun's lungs. And Sehun pitches, too. Pitches more. Always, always more.

 

"Again," Tao breathes, persuades afterwards, voice decidedly wrecked, husky and strained. "Again. Again. Again."

Again, again, again, Sehun agrees.

Sehun is still ashamed. Still, still. But he abandons pretense at least. Indulging these vile, violent delights.

And it's a good time as any, he figures, to start living a double life. He hunts wolves by day, fucks&—is fucked—by one by night.

There's no question, then. No resolution. No right, no wrong, just sensation, just pleasure, just heat. Skin. Blood. Want. Ruin.

He hates himself for it, still. Again. A week later. Another anarchist lead followed, an invitation to drinks denied. He feels ugly, wrong, but good, too. Like that pinned by those warm, muscled arms. Writhing back onto that warm, muscled body.

The disgust is mostly residual, weak beyond the thickness of self-loathing. Pales in comparison to the utter gravity of his desire. It's the strongest, has the most overwhelming pull.

And maybe something—conscience, actions, conviction—has got to give. Eventually. Maybe something will.

But right now, right now, Tao's cock, it's pressing, catching, and it's Sehun's body that's giving. Relenting. Accepting. Welcoming. Wanting more, harder, faster, all the while.

Tao delivers. Tao devastates. Tao damns.

And Sehun mourns his ever eroding self control, self preservation. Self-worth, maybe, too. Because good hunters, good people, they don't let this happen. Don't keep seeking it out.

But maybe Sehun, maybe he was never really meant to live up to those high, high expectations. Maybe, it's truly as his father said, and he's _broken_ , _defective_.

And he can't _stop_.

His control is fading fast, and there are fingers laced through his as he's taken apart piece by piece, thrust by thrust, moan by moan.

 

The weeks bleed into each other, his times with Tao the only concrete through the monotony of his days. The mundane, the routine. Chase, retreat, action, inaction.

Kikwang, he's taunting still. Gathering troops. An army. Weapons, too. They've never truly known a werewolf's wrath, he insists. Never truly battled one head on, fully matched. They're used the infrequent weakened swipes of wounded animals. Have never really played fair in this fight.

"We can and will ruin you," he promises. Means, he means.

They're on opposite sides. Not meant to _be_ in any capacity.

But Sehun, he still wants more. Wants completely. Wants in every way possible.

Continues to give and give and give.

 

"You're so loud," Tao manages, after one particularly vigorous round. He'd come across Sehun's thighs this time, bitten out his orgasm against the nape of his neck, fingers bruising and grounding against his hips. Briefly, deliciously in Sehun's hair, tugging him back by the roots as climax had him threatening to collapse, the pleasure wracking through Sehun, too.

He'd tugged him closer afterwards, leg fitting easily between Sehun's still trembling own, fingers absently tracing along Sehun's sides. "So _loud_." His tone is lazy and amazed, reverent. He is a warm solidity, firm comfort. It's wrong. It's wrong. It's wrong. Things, they're shifting fast.

Sehun flushes further in embarrassment, curls away as he recalls the long, long, long whine he'd released at Tao's perfect, heaving thrusts.

Tao, he'd made sounds, too. The breathiest little moans, stamped hot and searing along his neck, his shoulders, his back. Growls and pants as Sehun fucked back in earnest, whimpered for more, Tao, please, more.

Affected, he'd been affected, too. But maybe not as much.

"It's okay," Tao reassures, as if anticipating his insecurity, words hot and wet against Sehun's shoulder, hands winding around his waist, tickling over his navel, to drag him even closer. "It's alright, Little Red. Discreet, this place is discreet."

"How many others have you brought here?” Sehun murmurs back, vulnerable, aching.

_Seven. More maybe, if he's kept them alive the way he's kept you alive_

"Discreet," Tao breathes, against his skin, still, swollen lips dragging, "This wolf is discreet."

Sehun stiffens, curls away, and Tao lets him go.

"Jealous?” And the bite is there again, but the tone is wrong.

Sehun releases a small, noncommittal sound. But inside, inside he's hating himself for that potent, familiar curl. Of envy. Of need.

"I told you that first night, Little Red," Tao croons, falsely light, falsely sweet. "You, me, right now, that's the only thing that matters."

 _Right now, right now, right now_.

Sehun comes to a sort of awful realization. Come-covered and vulnerable and naked like that, he doesn't bother to clean himself up as he tugs on his clothes. He spares Tao a glance, and Tao meets his eyes.

They're golden. Soft. Deceptively so.

Sehun doesn't say another word as he slips out the door.

_The only thing that matters_

An awful ribboned lie, he knows. He fucking _knows_.

Ω

Joonmyun, though, he matters. Fucks and fucks and fucks him hard that night, repeatedly, vigorously, knot wide and unrelenting, unforgiving, dragging, dragging dragging, replacing, replacing, replacing. _Reminding_ as he takes him again and again. Owns him again and again.

"Mine," he pounds into him, practically snarling, eyes black, brow furrowed. _Alpha, my Alpha_. "Fucking _mine_."

Tao fights to keep his eyes open, his entire body a livewire of sensation, pleasure, heat. Stuttering hiccupy moans, hands scrambling hard along the lean sweaty expanse of Joonmyun's flexing back, as Joonmyun stretches him almost almost too much, dragging in the most delicious, most devastating sort of possession, pressing hard where he's most needed.

"Come like this," Joonmyun groans. "Come like this. Like this on my knot."

Useless and claimed like this, Tao comes just for him, weakly, gasping, pitching sharply nonetheless. And Joonmyun bends him further, legs hooking near his shoulders, stretching further as he grinds fucking _hard_ , pace erratic, forceful, the flare of his knot catching as he stutterfucks through orgasm.

Tao, boneless, strung out as he is, bucks up weakly to drag it out. Joonmyun groans into his neck, scrapes his teeth against the faint tattoo of his scar. His claim. His mark. His his his. Tao has always been his. Only ever his.

 _Mine_ , Tao's body remembers, knows, _mine, mine, mine_.

Joonmyun shudders once, twice, before melting forward completely, warm and sweaty and solid and sated.

Stuck still, immobile still.

"Love you," Tao breathes, and Joonmyun inhales, shifts to lick up his throat, along his jawline, up towards his earlobe, repeating the same.

The warmth he feels is even deeper then, suffusing his entire being, tendrils of love and contentment skittering along his veins. The contentment, the completion, it runs deep.

It is no less potent than it had been that first night. The way his entire body itched, burned, _ached_ for completion, completion that could only be found at Joonmyun's touch. That Joonmyun, Joonmyun was his answer. His every cell screaming at the heady, heavy sensory assault of Joonmyun's scent, his touch, his taste. Not love, then, not yet, but a sort of bone-deep vast, vast gnawing in his very soul, a sort of sudden devotion, sudden comfort. Only Joonmyun, only Tao. Mine, mine, mine. His, his, his.

 

The first hunter, he'd been a mistake. A happy accident, of sorts, coincidental, falling into Tao's lap one night as Tao, disguised, had wandered the area, teased at another pack's boundary. Scoped out for spies.

Luck, it had been sheer luck. A _mistake_.

Everything else, though. Before and after, that had been calculated. Served a greater purpose. Joonmyun's greater cause.

The secrecy surrounding their Alpha, Joonmyun's mated status, their correspondence with other packs, those actions were all deliberate, designed to make them seem weaker, less organized, less of a threat. Untamed, but yet tameable things. To be pitied, not feared.

It's an easy enough point to sell, after all.

Two Moons is largely runaways, refugees, outcasts, foreignborn but stateless. Members officially unmated, unclaimed, in a perpetual in-between, the pack serves as a sort of halfway house, a stepping stone towards other, better tomorrows. And even Joonmyun, a Kim son, would have been _powerful_ had he stayed with the pack outside the wolves, had he played the role of assimilationist, even with Joonmyun, it's easy enough to argue that he's disenfranchized and disillusioned, unwelcome and unwanted, paying still for his family's sins.

And their pack, they've been thriving in that ignorance, flourishing in the gaps of surveillance. Undermining, as Joonmyun often says, the whole structure of their oppression, brick by brick.

And that first hunter, that vigilante hunter, he _had_ been a mistake, but the best kind. A new way to weaken their enemies. Sex, intrigue, false trust and hope.

"If you want to," Joonmyun had pressed, and a dark, dark, twisted, _lupine_ part of Tao, _had_.

There had been a heady rush of power in entrapping that hunter. In making him _want_.

He'd been young, but not inexperienced, freelance, under the radar, hunting werewolves for the _thrill_ of it. Teeming with conviction, with potential, with hatred for Tao's kind, but oh easily, how eagerly he'd fallen. Knowing what Tao was, what he had, what we could do, his legs had still fallen around Tao's waist, his body, his heart had still given in the most pathetically needy way.

Enamored, enraptured, he'd disclosed the dates of future raids, found tapped trees, burned evidence on Tao's behalf. Eager always for Tao's smile, his approval, his false affections.

The sex had been good, too. Warm, quivering, gasping. Joonmyun rougher, harder, too, hormones reacting, claiming back in turn in the aftermath.

 

An ultimately fruitful mistake the pack wanted repeated, Tao's primary focus had shifted, then. To _this_ , to charming and bedding and wringing dry. Charming, baiting, with tight clothes, a lazy smile, a wide-eyed, soft, soft selling point about how much he really just _wants_.

Duties had shifted accordingly. Yixing, Jia, Seunghwan, they had picked up Tao's slack, scouting, surveying the region, ever pushing at boundaries, testing treaties, focusing all the while on frequent hunter haunts. Liyin, her mate Jongdae on bribing more officials. Shin Dongwoo's, father, actual father, to watching the children on Tao's particularly eventful weeks. Joonmyun's, Lu Hua's, Seulgi's all the more heavily, necessarily on amassing an army of sorts, courting other wolf packs, building a network as structured if not as well supplied in the Department.

 

Time, practice, have allowed Tao to hone his skills, perfect his technique, broaden his appeal.

Sehun, he's the first Department hunter. Not Tao's first attempt, but the first one to fall. And he'd done so so _easily_.

A legacy, moreover, the son of the man, the _monster_ that had leaked Jinyoung's name, Jinyoung's pack. A blow to Sehun's moral compass, a tie to wolves, would do great damage to the Department's very reputation. Discredit them and their cause. This, combined with the intel that has collected. Documented proof of corruption to the highest level.

Sehun, Sehun's a fucking _gift_.

If they take down the department, if they destroy or otherwise completely undermine its very structure, discredit the pieces that compromise its body, expose its corruption. If they humanize themselves, too. Then there will be no further need. There will be a true future for them after all.

 

And this plan of theirs, he's sure it's working.

Sehun, he's been unraveling. Alternately tearing at the seams. Falling apart either way. His moral compass compromised, he's been clamoring, been splintering at the edges in a heavy mix of cognitive dissonance and desire.

It's cruel. Necessary, but cruel.

Tao, he's been planting seeds of discord from their first encounter, but he's become more earnest in his compliments, soft, slow in his taking, persuasive in the aftermath. Staying long, long tangled in his arms, building up his trust, murmuring about how good he smells, tastes, feels. How Tao would never, ever want to hurt Sehun, and how it almost hurts that Sehun can't say the same.

Sehun melts back into his embrace always. Into the lazy kisses Tao drags against his bare shoulder, mouthing slowly until he's biting down on nape of his neck, sliding his hands to trace along the planes of his stomach, his chest. Soft in his false possession. Falser in his words.

"Am I really so bad?" he'd breathed their last time together. "Little Red, am I really so bad to deserve this? Am I really such a monster?"

And Sehun had trembled. Sehun had kissed

It's distressingly effective, Sehun distressingly affected.

He's been reaching out for him more readily, asking for more. More kisses, more fucks, more times. Please, more times.

So easy. So fucking _easy_ for him.

But Tao feels himself being tainted almost in it, too, though. Stained in the aftermath, too.

Necessary, this process is necessary.

♂

The Moon Rites, they're tonight. Ancient ritual, sacramental sex. _Orgies_. It's something hardwired into werewolves' not quite human DNA. Primal, crass. Naked, they'll run in wolf form through the woods, in hopes of catching that particular scent. The _Mine_. The _Forever_. The _One_.

Sehun isn't expecting him. Knows—fucking _knows_ —that even if he were to mean, mean as much to Tao as he...even if, even then, this supersedes that.

It's in his blood. It's his Destiny.

And Sehun, he's a plaything to pass the time.

So Sehun isn't expecting him. But he needs the warmth, the familiarity of that nondescript hotel room. Needs to lie in those bleached sheets, wallow in his misery and self-loathing and confusion, maybe.

Tao has become a habit, muscle memory, scheduled and expected.

Even when he knows better.

 

But Sehun, he's wrong.

 

Tao is there. Nude already, stroking himself slowly, speaking of the moon, how his blood is fucking burning for Sehun already. He needs. He fucking _needs_.

"Controls us like the tides," he rasps. "The Moon. The fucking _Moon_. I need to fuck you."

And he's already tugging at Sehun's clothes, pressing possessive kisses to his throat, his shoulder, biting into his skin.

"You smell like mine," he whispering, almost whimpering. "You smell like fucking _mine_."

And Sehun, Sehun feels like he's drowning.

"The Moon Rites," Sehun breathes back, dazed, slowing Tao's progress, holding him back. “Less—I know they say, but I thought. Shouldn't you—?"

Sehun isn’t a wolf, could never be his mate, and he isn't supposed to—Not with this part of Tao's life.

Not if Tao doesn't mean it.

Tao doesn't mask the surprise in his voice, his eyes. Beneath the burn of his obvious lust, heavy and hot on Sehun's skin. And Sehun doesn't miss the hesitance in Tao's hands then, stopping midreach, hovering in the air next to Sehun's face, cupping it almost tenderly. "Why wouldn't I—?"

And Tao is giving, too. In a way, Sehun thinks. He's giving in a way, forsaking something, too, and something pathetic and pleading is clawing its way up Sehun's throat, pressing hot and heavy against the back of his tongue.

Tao's never made claims at this, never had false pretenses as to what this is, what he and Sehun are. But now watching him like this, touching him like this, like this, he's blurring the lines, making Sehun want. More. Even more.

 _Want me back. Want me just as much_.

 _I'm losing. I'm losing. I'm lost. Please tell me you are, too_.

_Please I can't keep **doing** this. Not alone._

“You—you have to find your mate," Sehun says, trying not to arch into the touch. "You have to run out there. The Moon, you have to—with a wolf."

Tao's eyes, they shutter off. "That's not the way it works." He hesitates, sighs, cradles Sehun's face more fully. Sehun melts into it. He can't fucking help it. And Sehun, maybe he's just built too soft, too fragile for these types of things, shatters at the softest touches, the softest words, the softest gazes, the softest softest moments. Disarmed, distressed, disconcerted, he feels something inside of him giving way. "You're so clueless, Little Red," Tao breathes, soft, still so soft, and the nickname no longer stings. Sehun's eyelashes flutter, and Tao's thumb grazes his bottom lip, dragging in a disarming, distressing, disconcerting circuit. Sehun is dizzy. Sehun is dazed. Tao just watches him through surprisingly steady eyes, presses down harder with his thumb.

Sehun kisses it as he speaks, earnest, imploring. "Explain it to me, then. Enlighten me, then."

Tao shakes his head, exhales loudly, and Sehun can fucking _see_ the walls coming up. Right there before his very eyes. A teasing glimmer in his eyes, a smirk in his voice, a purposeful possession in the way he presses down on Sehun's throat, watches it bob. His eyebrows smooth, and his lips pucker. "That's now what you came here for, though, is it, Little Red?"

It's awful, but safer. A reminder. A familiar concrete.

There are storms in his eyes, catastrophes in his touches. And Tao is solid enough, then, sharp enough, for Sehun to hurt himself. Sehun is losing control, clambering for it weakly. But Tao, he is too.

He drags Sehun forward by the neck, and the heat, the lust that has been crackling in the air, it comes to a head, reaches a fever pitch.

"I'm gonna fuck you so hard," Tao groans, pressing him back into the mattress, biting down on his bottom lip. The sting, the way he's tugging at his clothes, it has Sehun gasping, rolling over, down to muffle his moans into the pillowcase. There's a demanding edge to his words, a marked desperation in his searing caresses."I need to fuck so, so hard."

 _The Moon_ , Sehun thinks, rocking back into the insistent press of Tao's slicked fingers, _the Moon Rites, he should be at the Moon Rites. Even if this, his fingers right fucking there, even if this is what I—_

And yes, Tao is right, Sehun bent at the waist, trembling moaning in the crook of his own elbow, arching back into the warm, already too-familiar stretch, tugging at his own cock with his free hand, _this_ is really what he came for. Nothing more, nothing less.

Ω

Tao is harnessing the beast, struggling to rein in the excess.

Joonmyun, he'd told him not to come tonight. Told him that it was too dangerous, like this with the Moon's magnetism singing in his veins, calling out for him, teasing at his sanity and self-control.

But Sehun, he's so so so close to falling completely. So close, and Tao he couldn't afford to lose one week.

Tao's taken him twice already. Once facedown, another time Sehun squirming, writhing down into his mouth, fucking himself down on Tao's tongue, invading Tao's senses with his own desperate arousal, _need_.

Tao's taken him twice. Enough, enough to have his fill. But he wants again.

Sehun's legs are around his shoulders once more, his moans heavy in Tao's ears, against his jawline, as he ruts up into him, cock dragging deliciously, grazing his own with every gorgeous buck upwards.

Tao's letting out the most pathetically tortured sounds as Sehun is provoking the wolf further, grinding until Tao can only see white, feel feral need ripping at the seams of his self control.

He can't. He can't. He can't.

He can't fucking _stop_.

"Want to fuck you again," he groans helplessly. "Like this."

Sehun's hands tangle in his hair, and mouth and body so open for Tao. Sehun's eyes when they meet his are raw, ruined, and Tao fucking _can't_.

And if he were with Joonmyun, this desperate with Joonmyun, they'd shift at this point. Mate as wolves, take and tear until they were sated, spent. But not today. Not like this. Not with Sehun.

Humans are so soft. So weak. Delicate. Fragile.

Sehun, eager, pliant, responsive as he is, Tao knows he can't fucking take it. Would break in two.

Sehun is not really his after all, after all, he remembers, reminds himself. Though he smells it. Though he's starting to feel it, too.

"Yes," he's panting. "Yes, again."

And Tao is fighting the need, the itch, the haze clouding his mind. It's threatening to take over, threatening to bleed out everything but pure, pathetic need.

Sehun's lower lip is caught between his teeth, eyes so heavy and hot, and he's whimpering for more, legs splaying open in blatant invitation.

For the first time, Tao takes him like this. Face to face, forehead to forehead, hips flush against the swell of Sehun's ass as he slides inside with an excruciatingly slow push.

Everything else peters out. Everything else stills.

It's the eery quietness before the storm, staring into the luster of Sehun's black, black eyes, seeing the darkness, the promise, the reflection of his own want, need, desperation. Again.

Tao is briefly lost in it, head tipping forward to crash against Sehun's own, lips seeking his out. Buried deep inside, pressed tight like this, Tao is overwhelmed. Sehun's scent is so much richer like this, and Tao can feel the fullbody way he reacts to every thrust, the tremor, the tension, the tantalizing heat. He can taste Sehun's low, low plea for more as he retreats slowly, pushes back in deep. Sehun's hands scramble down his back, nails dragging hard and hot and eager as his head tips back with a long, long moan of his name. "I want to eat you alive," Tao bites out. "I want to tear you _apart_."

And he doesn't miss the moan that Sehun releases, the way his lips tremble. Not when he's buried deep inside, not when he's pressed tight like this.

And the third time, maybe the third time will be the charm.

But there's something disarming, distressing, disconcerting about his eyes, about his touch, the open, open way he writhes and wants and moans and takes and take and takes. So well. So fucking well.

Humans, they're always so responsive, so loud, but Sehun he's almost obscenely so.

And Tao is fighting it again, trembling from the exertion of holding back as he watches him, drinks in the furrow of his heavy brows. He's so beautiful, too too beautiful, and he can't deny himself again.

But he can't. He can't. He fucking _can't_.

Tao groans, lifts Sehun's legs to drape them over his own. He falls back, and the hunter falls into his lap with an undignified gasp, groaning at the loss of Tao's cock in his ass. "Ride," Tao rasps, cupping Sehun's face. "Set the pace. I can't go slow."

♂

His arms braced at Sehun's side, Tao holds him steady, and Sehun chokes on a moan, head lolling forward to pant against Tao's throat.

Sehun guides the movements like this, rises and falls, and Tao watches, grips, moans, grinds upwards towards his every descent. His hips slam upwards over and over and over again, heaving thrusts that leave Sehun gasping and panting and begging for more. It's ruining him, the stretch of Tao's cock, the heady heaviness of Tao's breath from this angle.

But it's the watching, the watching that is the most awful part. Sehun's control, his command, his self-worth, he feels them all crumbling with every fluid drop on Tao's cock. And he has to shut his eyes, clench them shut, focus on the pleasure instead. The pleasure makes sense. The pleasure almost makes it worth it.

Firm fingers dig into his hipbones, as Sehun quickens his pace, rising and falling almost erratically, moaning and begging against Tao's skin. His thighs burn, his body, too, from the welcome, hot stretch of Tao's cock inside him. And he can't. Please, Tao. He can't any longer. Take over again. It feels so fucking _good_ whenever he does. Whenever he just fucking _takes_.

Tao's lips are tickling against his throat, and he's murmuring into his skin. "Mine" over and over and over again. His teeth scrape, and his fingers bruise. And his cock presses upwards with the most heaving, stretching, dragging, exquisitely thorough thrusts. Nudging, scraping right, right right where Sehun needs.

"Please," he whimpers, eyes opening, seeking out Tao's. "Please."

And Tao's voice is so low, so husky, so dangerously frayed as he rasps out a commanding, "Hold on."

Sehun, limp with pleasure as he is, a mess of moans and loose limbs, he manages to get his arm around Tao's shoulders, brace himself with his thighs spread open and the fingernails of one hand biting into Tao's skin, the other tugging desperately at his own cock.

And Tao fucks him _hard_ , then. Harder than he's ever gone before. Harder than Sehun's ever been fucked. He drives up into him hard and heaving, rough so rough, the snaps of his relentless hips resonating, intermixing with Sehun's own helplessly loud moans, Tao's fucking growl. Merciless, forceful, perfect, perfect, perfect.

Tao's own hands grip Sehun’s h, arresting him there as he goes and goes and goes. And it's the watching and it's the fucking and it's the predatory gleam in Tao's blown, blown eyes. Their eyes lock, Tao's golden, golden, glowing.

Sehun whimpers his name, and Tao bites down hard on his bottom lip. The jolt of pain mixes with the drugging pleasure and he's coming, hiccuping a moan as his entire body clenches and releases. Helplessly, awash in sensation, waves and waves and waves of consuming pleasure, his eyelids flutter shut.

But even quivering with the aftershocks of it, moaning in the afterglow, too, Sehun forces his eyes open, focused, to watch Tao.

Tao is close, Sehun can feel it. Knows by the uneven snap of his hips, the low, low rasp of his growl, the way he's grinding up hard after every push. And even with his hips locked, Sehun manages to clench around him in encouragement, writhe down clumsily until Tao is falling over as well, trembling with it. He's falling apart, so beautifully. Because of and for him.

His face is creased with pleasure, and it's exactly what Sehun imagined. Except maybe even better. More beautiful. Soft, so soft. Lidded eyes, knit brows, a slack jaw, a bared throat, and gorgeously swollen lips.

Sehun wants to remember. Wants to treasure. Wants to keep.

It's wrong. It's wrong. It's wrong.

He pets Tao's sweaty bangs back, lingers on the softness of his brow, the sharpness of his cheek.

He's trembling, still. Long, long afterwards. Still and silent, save for the quiver in his limbs, the heavy hitch of his chest as he breathes in and out.

"Tao?" Sehun tries, thumb dragging out to brush at his lashline, and Tao stiffens, shaking still, but his head most notably.

"No," he says. "No. No. No."

And before Sehun has a proper chance to protest, to ask for clarification. Tao is jumping naked outside the hotel window, running, running, running.

A

When he gets home, he's shaking still. Consumed still.

 _I told you_ , he wants to say, starts to say, but Tao is needing still. Needing him. Naked and vulnerable and wholly his.

He cries out when Joonmyun touches him. Just the lightest touch, chaste and warm. And that something that has been clawing underneath his skin, clawing at Joonmyun's too, that something is sated, that something is soothed. And Joonmyun knows because he's been aching too. Needing too. He finds relief in the overheated press of Tao's skin against his own. His every cell has been clambering out for this since moonrise. Too dangerous. He could have hurt, been hurt. It was careless. He was so fucking _careless_.

And he'd told him. He'd _told_ him.

It's dangerous, sex. It's powerful, chaotic, too close, too much. Something in their DNA, maybe, Joonmyun thinks, something in the wolf. The wolf's desire for complete possession. Tao's been playing with fire.

And beyond that, Tao, Joonmyun knows, he's just built too soft, too fragile for these types of things, runs the danger of falling apart for it. He's been giving too much, for this hunter's sake, for the sake of Joonmyun's vision. He shouldn't have to. He _doesn't_ have to.

"Tao," Joonmyun soothes, cradling his face. "Tao, please. You don't have to do this. It's too dangerous. You don't have to."

Not for my sake. Not for the pack's sake. _Definitely_ not for his sake.

But no, Tao is insisting back, lips warm and wet and welcome against Joonmyun's throat. No, he _wants_ to. He fucking wants to. He made this call. Careless and bold, maybe, but so has everything else he's been doing. So is everything that Joonmyun does, too. Talking to those packs, hoping against hope that they won't turn on him, too. And really, honestly, Tao fucking wants to. He _wants_ to.

And yes, Joonmyun can feel that too the flare of attraction, excitement, the thrill of it all. It's pleasure laced with bitterness, with spite, with hatred, but pleasure nonetheless. And Joonmyun often keeps fucking away the residual shame of it.

"I am going to keep going," Tao decides, words firm even as weak and breathy as they are. "I _am_." And Joonmyun nods helplessly.

But he's wresting back control in the most concrete way he can, kissing away the worry clawing up his throat. Fucking away the insecurities, too. The doubts, the anger, the shameful, shameful jealousy. Painfully familiar, these emotions, they're constricting and painful in his throat.

It's so deep now, the scent, doesn't dissipate as easily. Lingers and lingers and lingers. It rouses something deep, something ugly, something beyond the burn of indignation, the bitter taste of hatred. It's something hotter, more potent, more confusing, more feral.

Tao hangs off his knot, writhes back on it until he's spent, whimpering with release, panting _his_ name.

And the ends justify the means, almost. They _have_ to, at this point.

And Joonmyun knows he only has to trust his mate, his love, his everything, only has to trust his calls.

 

And Tao, Tao does have a point. Discussion, even the vaguest hints of anarchist, abolitionist leanings, it's decidedly dangerous. Grounds for betrayal.

There's a secret language, a cautious dance.

Recently, Joonmyun's been courting Full Moon. Chinese, refugees, too. Qian, Yifan, Yiyun, Fei, Yibo, the twins Xiao Long and Da Long.

Chinese wolves, they're generally harder to court. Have had much worse. And Tao, in his softer days, his more exhausted, more doubtful days, he's reminded Joonmyun of the worser fates their kind have endured. Chained, tortured, lost, truly lost. Tao has reminded him that there's an almost kindness in disregard. There's mercy in this. (They weren't here for Jinyoung. They don't understand how it's only the smallest degree, how it only takes the smallest transgression. And wolves, they can't afford this slow, slow acceptance. It's not a safe enough balance, not a worthy enough reprieve)

Qian is fiercely efficient, and her pack though small, has been flourishing as others have died out. Her packs been capitalizing on foreign ties, doing the best possible considering their circumstances.

But Qian, she's still been hinting at sympathizing. They'd traveled through the harsh, harsh Korean peninsula in the dead of winter three years before, escaping the very worst. But that didn't make this—that didn't make it any better, really. Their Alpha, their leader, their guardian, too, she has confessed to wanting _more_ , wanting _enough_. Peace and equality, controversial and hard to secure as they seem to be.

These training sessions, in the dead of night, in wolf form, these have been a sort of trial period. They've disguised it as exercise time, made a comment about how the wolf itches for a different type of indulgence, a different type of action, violence, satisfaction. And Qian had agreed easily enough, red lips stretching in an easy, telling smile.

It's the same smile she wears now. Secretive, vaguely seductive. She sheds her clothes, and Joonmyun, Joonmyun's pack is quick to follow. Stripping and shifting, too, bounding after her with echoing howls.

And it's here, it's like this, that there true forms are shown. Tao is larger than him as a human, ever looming, ever folding himself smaller for Joonmyun's sake, for his own, too. But he's dwarfed by Joonmyun's wolf. Powerful, intimidating, still, but small, so much smaller. Black as night, nimble, he skirts easily in and out of Joonmyun's line of sight, skirting to nip at the sleek coats of the other wolves. He crashes into Yifan, and Joonmyun watches, amused, as the slightly larger wolf bites at his ear, knocks him over bodily, howls down at him.

Tao returns it with low growl. Playful and amused. They wrestle each other into the ground. They're both oversized omegas in human form, deceptive in their appearance. Yifan, gangly and giant, is small like this, too. Tawny and lean, he paws at Tao's chest, pins him down, and then nuzzles into him when Tao, helplessly pushes back.

It's only when Tao lets himself fall back completely, open admission of defeat, that Yifan lets up. Chases after his own mate, Yiyun with a long, long cry.

In wolf form, the connection is even more pronounced, and Joonmyun can feel him, like a phantom limb. Another half. As he runs, exertion burning through his muscles, his veins.

Tao wrestles him into the ground, too, pins him with his front paws, howls in triumph. He had been much thinner when Joonmyun had first met him. His wolf, too. Not lean, but starved. But now, there is strength in his body, conviction and love bleeding out of his every pore. Swelling with affection as he is, Joonmyun nips at Tao's throat, his shoulder. Tao shudders, omega instincts protesting, and Joonmyun gets leverage enough to roll him over.

It's softer, more natural for them like this. Even as Joonmyun pins him down, holds him there. The aggression, the petty and human and ugly and sad, it all bleeds out in these moments. And the chase and retreat, the security that this is their most natural state, the lupine, it soothes the aches, mollifies the insecurities, persistent as they can be. There's a release in this, too. A reassurance in this, too.

Tao lets himself fall open with a low growl, legs splaying, throat bared, but a playful glint shining in his large, golden eyes. And it's the perfect startling clarity of completion, Tao and Joonmyun, just like this. Naked beneath the stars.

Joonmyun presses his snout to the side of Tao's neck, nuzzles deep into him, inhaling the heady scent of Tao, of _mine_. Extra potent now. Extra perfect, and Tao's body turns to accommodate him, so Joonmyun is draped across him, warm and soft and familiar. For the first time in a long, long time, they fall asleep like that. Entangled and most true to form.

Tao shifts sometime in the night, urges him awake, and they walk naked, hand in hand, back to their home. The smile that Tao presses to his neck, it's warm, familiar, wholly his.

Ω

Tao, he's been lying since the beginning. Denying from the start. Dooming then from the start. But even then it's hardly like the world at large was meant to foster this, hardly like this could be anything but ill-fated, ill-conceived, temporary, wrong. _Wrong_.

They're coming towards their shelf life.

Sehun is so pliant, so malleable. He's so fucking _close_.

He wants Tao so fucking _much_.

This alone, this isn't enough, he knows. It's chemical, it's visceral. You can fuck somebody you hate. Somebody whose existence, whose species you disparage, disenchfranchise, debase, degrade. You can. Just fine, you can.

But it's harder if you love them. Harder if you need them. Pathetically and desperately and against the odds. Tao, he just needs to get Sehun there. He's already so fucking _close_.

Maybe if he presses harder, gives _more_ , makes Sehun trust him.

It means speaking with a hint of sincerity, accessing the very real, very vulnerable, very human desire to be accepted, understood. Long buried, hidden, but real.

Joonmyun doesn't _understand_. Joonmyun doesn't _want_ to understand. They're operating on a limited time table as it is, and Tao can't afford to be half-assed. Everything is already against them. Joonmyun can't be, too.

But the first interruption, the first concrete interruption comes two week later.

 

Post-coital, lulled into a hazed out sensual post coital stupor, Sehun traces lazily along Tao's broad body, fingertips grazing a languid circuit from neck to shoulders, shoulders to chest. Repeat.

There's a wrecked sort of intimacy in it all. But in the afterglow, too. In the aftermath, ordering takeout, eating side by side, pressing so close still as they watch TV, sticky and naked and flushed still. Sehun's fingers, eyes, lips lingering still.

There's a commercial for whitening toothpaste, another for rice cookers. Then a news segment. Another dead.

Sehun, pliant, pliant Sehun, stiffens suddenly at his side.

"You're one of them," he breathes, voice still unsteady, husky, strained. "You're one of them, and here I am with you." His laugh is disbelieving, tight. "I'm _fucking_ you."

Tao shakes his head insistently, offended, stiffening too. His fingers curl around Sehun's trembling wrist. His other hands shifts to cup his face. "I wouldn't _ever_."

"Those people," he continues, curling away, nonetheless. "Tao, I'm not an idiot. I interviewed, and those people…"

Tao shakes his head more firmly this time, pitches his voice low, imploring, eyes soft and persuasive. Sincere still, but played up for the sake of keeping Sehun placated. "I told you that first night. I don't hurt. Not unless it's asked of me." And he traces the bite mark on Sehun's shoulder drags down to the one on his hip, emphasizing his point. Sehun shivers helplessly at the caress. His entire body shuddering so easily. _Yes please yes_.

"But you did—I mean, you still fucked them?"

And oh, jealousy. Oh, Sehun's unwarranted demands for more.

He's falling. He's fallen.

"Yes," Tao breathes, nosing down, crooning the words just so. "Yes, I fucked them because I wanted and they wanted. They hated me before, and I could hate them after. I hurt in that way. But never—I don't kill. I would _never_ kill."

 _Are you going to hate me, too?_ , Tao can read in Sehun's face, the hesitant hope in his the tilt of his eyebrows, the curl of his lips. He wants to be different, wants to be the exception. His eyelashes cast heavy shadows across the sharp planes of his cheekbones, and the sauce from Sehun's jjajangmyeon congeals in it's styrofoam container as they lie there in precarious, vulnerable, heavy, heavy silence. Sehun doesn't meet his eyes, and his mouth opens and closes several times.

"Little Red," Tao murmurs finally, breaking the spell, rerouting the heavy unidentified vulnerable thing, "Darling, Oh Sehun. You're the only one that matters right now."

And Tao doesn’t—can’t—miss the awful, awful desire in Sehun's dark, dark eyes.

♂

"Why do you hate—Why do you hurt?" Sehun asks, presses a week later, sticky and flushed in the afterglow, but still touching, still wanting, tracing the faded pucker of a scar on Tao's neck, the definition of his shoulders, his chest. A crescent tattoo—Two Moons—that he taps with his thumb, scrapes with his nail, Tao shivering at the touch, the sting.

Tao, responsive, captivated Tao, who has been arching into the meandering tiptoe of Sehun's fingers, stiffens slightly, sighs. His eyelashes flutter, eyes shift away.

"You don't understand," Tao murmurs softly, and his lips graze Sehun's throat, soft and vulnerable there, in the crook where neck meets shoulder.

"I want to," he presses back, fingernails dragging down Tao's scalp, his back. "I _want_ to." The words, they've been haunting him, the desire has become an ache in his bones.

 _Please don't hurt me. I would never, ever hurt you. Don't hate me. I would never, ever hate you_.

Tao curls into him, then, melting forward with a soft, soft, distressed sound. His eyelashes kiss against the hollow of Sehun's throat, words whispered there in a soft secret.

"There was this man," he starts. "When I was very small. He came into my village. We lived in the woods, you know. Tried to stay away because of the law about…" Tao trails off. "We never invited interaction, outside interaction. But he said he wanted to talk to us, take pictures, said it was for schools. So people could learn about us." Tao swallows heavily, blinks, then bites his lower lip, looks away. Sehun touches him, reaches out to cup his face, presses for him to continue.

Tao swallows again, and the movement vibrates against Sehun's palm.

"But they asked us to get naked a lot. Wanted us to say that that's how we walked around. Wild, you know. They—they didn't respect our boundaries. We were like bugs. You know those butterflies that they keep pinned in museums." He sighs. "Animals. More—more animals. He wanted us to be something to _pity_. This man, this man that spoke for us. Not people. Almost people," he quickly amends. “Just principles, just political talking points, just—just _things_. I was a _thing_."

Tao burrows his face further into Sehun's neck, words muffled, but tellingly wet, and his breathing is labored.

"I have the book. Joonmyun—my—Joonmyun, he bought it for me. This man, he said I had feral eyes," Tao says, voice low. "That's how you know I'm not quite right. Not quite human. My feral eyes, my—my sharp mouth. My wolf's heart." And by the end he's whispering, the words so soft, but so heavy, laden with so much longing, sadness, despair. Too much. Sehun is helpless to their persuasion, pulling back enough to study Tao's face.

Sehun's fingers tap beneath Tao's chin. Trace that sharp mouth. Those feral eyes. Also his cheekbones. Also his flared nose. Also his dark eyebrows. Tao sighs, melts into his caress.

"You humans," Tao observes softly. "You've always been the crueler. Even when you were soft. Even when you tried to be good. You've always been more cruel. More feral. More vicious. Always so quick to hurt."

Blanket condemnation.

"I don't," Sehun starts. "I don't understand what you're trying to—"

"I'm _human_ ," Tao insists, words heavy and thick with something akin to longing. They're laden with despair, pain, too. "I'm _human_. Human enough. _This_ ," Tao gestures to the tattoo on his hip, "this doesn't negate that. But that's never been enough for you. You have never been satisfied with my almost. With my nearly. Humans, they don't care to listen. Don't care to understand. Just to hurt. All you do is hurt."

Tao sucks his lower lip into his mouth, eyes heavy, solemn on Sehun's own. Hesitating, deliberating.

"Even you," Tao adds after a beat. "Even you."

 _No, not me_ , Sehun wants to insist. _I feel you. I see you. You're enough, Tao. Don't hate me. Don't hurt me. You don't have to hurt me first_.

And Sehun wonders, suddenly, pathetically, why he wants to be distinct from the rest.

But Tao seems to anticipate his retort. And he chases it away quickly enough with his mouth, his fingers, his cock.

"This is reaping what you've sown," Tao confesses into the seam of Sehun's open, panting mouth, and Sehun moans helplessly into the air, presses back even harder.

 

And if there ever was a way to be sensible about this, Sehun knows it's probably not this. He's doing it all _wrong_.

Tao, he's making it confusing. Reeling him in tighter and tighter, more and more helpless. That's the point, he knows. That's Tao's aim, after all.

Sehun has been abandoning all his anchors, disparaging all his failsafes. And maybe this is self-destruction. Maybe this is an implosion. A sort of long-delayed teenage rebellion and quarter life crisis.

Tao looks like, tastes like, feels like sin. Like Sehun's perdition. Like his soul's damnation. The worst, most biting temptation. Forbidden, lethal, dark, and beautiful. And Sehun—Sehun is starved for more.

But there's propaganda in Tao's pillow talk, calculation in his caresses, and Sehun knows. He fucking knows. But he still hopes beyond hope, shatters at the softest touch, softest words, softest eyes.

Tao is disarmingly beautiful, at times disarmingly vulnerable, too. Or good enough at faking it, or Sehun so far gone as to have wanted it, projected it.

And his eyes, so often, they're so fucking _soft_. So deceptively soft. Voice softer yet, heartbreakingly, painfully so.

Tao asks Sehun over and over again whether he's really so bad. Really the Big Bad Wolf? Really as awful as Sehun's been led to believe. The question always hot against his skin always, always post-coital always.

Tao had asked him home after the last time, convinced him with minimal effort. "Let me spread you open on that soft, soft bed of yours, darling Red. Let me take you where you're most vulnerable." And he'd made good on that promise, at least, had fucked Sehun in his own bed, left the scent lingering there long enough for Sehun to bury his face in the heady fog of musk and sweat and heat and sex.

Tao has taken him once already, with his fingers in Sehun's ass, his lips around Sehun's cock. Purely, confusingly for Sehun's pleasure. And Tao's watching him now, testing him now. He touches him almost languidly, but pointed, precise, fingertips skittering to trace over the impressions left by his teeth, his fingers, his lips, Sehun's fading, shameful tattoos.

"Am I?" Tao repeats, fingers tiptoeing up Sehun's navel, scraping against Sehun's pebbled nipples. Sehun's back bows, chasing the touch. "Am I as bad as all those fairy tales suggest? Or don't you enjoy being eaten up, Little Red? Don't you enjoy being bitten and pinned?"

Sehun does. He really fucking does. And he bites back a whimper as Tao's fingers graze his throat.

"Are you still scared of me, Little Red?"

I never was, he wants to assert. I don't want to be, he means. I am scared of you, but for a different reason now. In a different way. And I need you to stop asking this of me. I need you to stop draining me.

"Stop" he manages. “Just—just fuck me already," he breathes. Wrecked already, ruined so easily, but not enough—not quite enough—to miss the faint mirth in Tao's irises, glittering there beneath the burn of his lust. Tao is still the less desperate of the two, the less vulnerable, the less fucked over, fucked up.

That's reason enough to fear him. That's reason enough to stop.

But Tao's fingers are inside of him again, stretching him open, and he can't. He fucking _can't_.

"Fuck me," he gasps. " _Fuck_ me."

 _Fuck me open. Mark me from the inside. Swallow me whole. Take me. Take me. Take me. And don't ever let me go. Don't ever make me hurt_.

Tao doesn't turn him, hasn't since the Moon Rites. And Sehun shudders in in his arms as Tao hooks Sehun's legs around his waist, folds him in half. Restricted movements, fathomless want, encouraging moans. And Tao presses in deep, fucks him raw and needy, all the same.

"My Little Red," Tao mocks, or moans, voice husky, tight, but movements steady, sure. "My darling, sweet Little Red."

Sehun's arms wind tight around the straining muscles of Tao's back. He urges him harder, closer, and his lips drag against the seam of Tao's open mouth, panting into his skin. "Not, right now. You're not a werewolf. I'm not a hunter," he's saying, negotiating. "Not right now. Please at least not right now. Call my name."

Tao goes that much harder. Fucks even deeper, and Sehun's fingernails drag down in desperate need, hips tilting up for more. His hand falls to his own cock.

"Call my name," he hears himself begging, biting down on Tao's trembling bicep, he strokes, strokes, strokes, and Tao fucks, fucks, fucks. The pleasure is staggering, his moans, bucks violent, needy. But he still need to hear it. "Say my name."

Tao's collapsing further forward, fucking so hard, the sound of their colliding hips is echoing in Sehun's ears.

But he still needs. He still fucking _needs_ —

"Call my name. Sehun," he urges, begs. "Say my name, _please_."

Tao lets out a breathless huff of a groan. Tries, fails again. Twice, thrice. Before finally, gorgeously, rasping out one long, long "Sehun."

And Sehun shudders bodily, moans helplessly, begs for it again. Louder, _please_. He's stroking almost violently now. So, so fast, chasing the high.

Tao is starting up a chant of it. Fucking harder, his cock catching on Sehun's rim, dragging in the most deliciously sinful way.

And fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—there's only light. He practically blacks out from the force of it, knows that he screams Tao's name.

 

His bruises, his scent, they're lingering. And Tao is bleeding into his waking hours again, leeching, breaking, breaking, breaking.

Sehun's never been very good at compartmentalizing. Never been good at hiding things. He's built too soft, too fucking fragile.

"Love," Chanyeol notes absently, eyes bright, laughing, his knees digging into Sehun's shoulders, his ass bony against Sehun's chest. He's sweating, panting so, so hard, but still teasing, happy. "You've got the look of love in you. Makes you _weak_."

Sehun protests bodily, tries to shake him off, but Chanyeol is persistent, solid, unmoving, laughing even louder now that Sehun is squirming.

"Try this position later, Sehunnie." Chanyeol reaches out to pet his face. "With that oh so lucky guy or gal. At least make sure you're getting the most out of all those missed Department dinner dates."

Sehun flushes, flounders, and Chanyeol thumbs affectionately at his bangs.

"Okay, one more time."

 

It's been weeks since Kikwang's last official letter. But he's been speaking through actions recently, leaving his calling card in the form of pawprints—bold, bold—mudtracks outside Department Headquarters, the hideouts out of Department Heads.

Their silence, it makes people even more wary. Ever waiting for the other shoe to drop.

A sympathizer on the inside, it had been guessed. Some high, _high_ level corruption. They have been hankering down on rookies, especially. Less training. Less muscle. Chanyeol has been doubling up his efforts, leaving Sehun too exhausted, sometimes, to do anything more than lie there and _take_ as Tao thrusts him to completion.

Sweaty, thrumming still, Sehun decides to start attending those parties anew.

 

The panic, the Kikwang-inspired panic, in terms of positives has meant extra mentoring, resources. But it has also meant more strained relations among Department members, more scrutiny on all sides. They need to be smoked out.

They're divided into groups. Sehun's consists of Minseon, Sanghyuk, Chanyeol, Kyungsoo. They're given the northern quadrant, Sehun the maps. Safehouses, he's told to find safehouses. Kikwang's allies among the rural wolves. The wolves that have slipped through the cracks.

Something heavy and odd twists in Sehun's throat as he accepts the maps. Something like cognitive dissonance maybe. He's reminded of Tao. Tao and his pack, denying luxuries for the sake of anonymity.

But these wolves, they're different than Tao, he reasons. Actually worthy. More worthy.

 

Sehun gets into an argument with Minseon about it over coffee the next morning, nonetheless. His team leader. He spreads the maps over their rickety table, the highlight marks, the notes he's already taken.

"But how do you fucking _know_?" he insists. "How can you—with so much conviction? They haven't done anything _wrong_."

"That's _why_." And her eyebrows furrow, lips pucker in the most distractingly beautiful way. "Questioning, Junior Officer. We're questioning. Or would you rather, Sanghyuk—?"

Sehun snatches the maps back. And it's a fine line he's treading. Dangerous, dangerous words to be saying. In front of Minseon, a quietly contemplative, quietly alarmed Kyungsoo.

In his room that night, Tao licks him open so so so slowly, reduces him to a begging, eager mess of limbs and moans and sensation. Fucks him open afterwards with his fingers, his cock. Tangles his fingers into Sehun's hair to tug him back, keep him from collapsing back into the pillows, breaking Tao's heavy, heavy gaze.

His priorities are all wrong. He's been stripped of his control. His world is imploding, his footing is unsure.

He can't stop. He can't stop.

He continues to fall deeper and deeper. Not even trying to hide, retreat.

 

They find a nest that next week. They're not on record, not even registered. Rural. So fucking rural. Threadbare. Poor. But they identify themselves readily enough as Moonlight, alarmed and terrified, surrendering information easily enough at the press of silver blades to the younger members' throats. They confess to other, more damning things, too.

He'd offered them meat, this wolf. He'd offered them fruit, too. Lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, if they let him stay in their house some nights. Him and his very large, very orderly pack. They'd come bearing gifts the first time they'd offered, and really it had been so long since they had had visitors. How could they have known that—

But Sehun knows, it's grounds enough. Even like this. It's a capital offense.

And Sehun is sick with the realization.

He throws up in the car on the way to the Department. Throws up later when they celebrate this victory. Invite him to drink. Order him to. He's a hero. He's their hero.

He throws up at home, too, stomach sloshing with alcohol, with shame. He cries into his pillowcase and can't even begin to understand why.

 

And in the aftermath, in the flurry of it, Sehun, Sanghyuk, they earn their titles. Right then and there, badges laminated while the others cheer, paper work filed, computer database updated. They are the men of the hour that Friday, and Sanghyuk's entire face splits with his grin. They shuffle into 5 cars. And there's no refusing this celebration, either.

 

Baekyun is drunker than usual, glassy-eyed with celebration, bold—bolder—with intoxication. He's been blurting out random compliments, slurring heartfelt confessions of love, admiration, urging them between hiccups to get as drunk, as merry as him. Come _on_.

And Sehun sipping guilty from his beer bottle, he's given cause to remember how much things have changed since the last time Baekhyun had been this drunk. How all Sehun had wanted then was for Minseon, for all of them to like him back.

Baekhun raises his eyebrow in challenge, laughter dancing in his bright, wide eyes. And true to form, he is proposing another drunken dare. Men of the hour exclusive. Voice shrill, pitchy, "Kiss," he's saying again. He holds up his hands in a silencing motion when Chanyeol, Kyungsoo groan. "No, no, kiss the last person you had a wet dream about."

Baekhyun motions at Sanghyuk, the youngest, to go first. And Sanghyuk red-faced presses a peck to Taekwoon's mouth, apologizes in a stuttered, rapid rush. It didn't have to mean anything, hyung. It hadn't meant anything, so please don't take this the wrong way. Please don't drop his mentorship. He didn't mean to—you know, but they'd _said_.

Baekhyun laughs wickedly, and Taekwoon is wiping absently at his mouth, rubbing it with his thumb, face guarded still, but eyebrows pinched up. And Sanghyuk sits there stiff and awkward, still impossibly red, staring the lip of his bottle, his lower lip caught between his teeth.

Discord, Baekhyun's aim seen through. It's a pleasant distraction, the annoyance this inspires.

"Sehunnie," Baekhyun croons a full minute later, and at his left, Jaehwan grimaces.

Sehun across the table from him, slides forward slowly, and Baekhyun's eyebrows tilt in surprise. But his mouth remains amused, lips pursing in invitation, eyes glowing bright in the ambient light.

Sehun can read the _Was it good_ in Baekhyun's lazy confidence, relishes in the small sound of disappointment he releases when Sehun kisses Kyungsoo instead.

He'd dreamed once, months before, months that still made sense. After Kyungsoo had pinned him particularly hard, panting near his collarbone, Sehun had dreamed of Kyungsoo sliding his hands down Sehun's sweaty, trembling sides, tilting up sharply as he mouthed at his throat, ground against him hard and fast until they both came.

Tame, honestly, but it still counts.

So with the wooden table digging into his belly, Sehun kisses Kyungsoo. And he doesn't miss the way Chanyeol's laughter dies in his throat.

It's a nice kiss. Kyungsoo's lips are plump, plush, distressingly soft. They give beneath the pressure of his own, and he sighs into it as Kyungsoo makes a big show of tugging at his collar to drag him closer, mussing up his hair, tilting his head sharply before releasing him with a small, good-natured laugh.

"You'll pay for these liberties," Kyungsoo stage whispers, licking his lips. "You'll _cry_ for these liberties."

As Sehun's pulling back, shifting, flustered, Minseon laughs, tugs at the collar of his shirt again. She releases a loud, fake gasp.

"Maknae," she notes, motions, "You've been quite busy on those nights off, haven't you?"

Jaehwan wolf-whistles. Sehun flushes, flustered and floundering under the sudden scrutiny "I didn’t—" he protests

"Boy or girl?" Kyungsoo cuts in, mildly intrigued.

Baekhyun laughs wickedly. "Maybe both? Both at the same time, right, little one?"

Taekwoon follows up with a quiet, "How'd you leave them?" his face twisted in muted, precarious interest.

"Stop," Sehun insists.

And Chanyeol is tugging at his collar now, too, pressing down on the faded bite mark, and Sehun curls away from him, burying his face in the warmth of Sanghyuk's shoulder.

He thinks he feels Minseon's hand on his back.

"Stop," Minseon is insisting, too, laughing still. But firm, sympathetic. "Let the baby Hunter get his kicks, so long as it doesn't affect his work. _Clearly_ , it hasn't been."

And oh yes, the reason they are all here. Sehun should really drink more. Drink this guilt, this insecurity, this cognitive dissonance all away.

 

Sehun is monumentally drunk by the time he gets home, stomach sloshing with is as he stumbles towards the cab Chanyeol has hailed him. Him and Sanghyuk. Sanghyuk had been drinking his problems away, too. Problem, really, his awful, awful unrequited love.

Sanghyuk falls heavily beside him in the leather seats, head against Sehun's shoulder. Drunk, monumentally drunk, too, but animated with a sort of quiet, nervous energy. Purpose, Sehun realizes, Sanghyuk, he still has purpose. Dreamy-eyed still.

The Department, funded as they are, powerful as they are, popular as they are, they know to target the young. Employ the smart and purposeless, or the not as smart but convicted. Sehun's always fall into the latter category, Sanghyuk had, too. But he's internalized. He's accepted.

Their _purpose_ , not just their pay, their free training, their free apartment.

Sehun is crippled with a sudden distressing case of envy as he watches Sanghyuk blink blearily in the shadows of the streetlights as the taxi drives on.

"Sanghyuk, why do you?" he asks. "Why did you chose this?"

"Why did you?" he counters, brow furrowing, tone more than vaguely annoyed.

"I didn't have a choice, really," Sehun confesses. "Not with my father. Not with my family."

Sanghyuk pulls back at that, watching more carefully, though no less drunkenly. His words, though intoxicated, manage to be measured, hesitant. "Is that to say that if you'd…?"

"I don't _know_."

Sanghyuk exhales shakily, purses his lips. "I wanted to be hero, I guess,” he provides, a counterpoint. "Hunters, ever since we were little, you know, they've been our heroes. I _wanted_ that. I thought everybody wanted that."

"I don't feel like a hero. Not after what we did to the family. Not after what I helped us do to that family."

Sanghyuk is silent, contemplative for a long, long time, and Sehun aches to fill the silence.

"I guess I'm having a crisis of self," he concedes.

Sanghyuk turns away. "Yeah, you guess."

 

Tao is waiting for him when he gets home. He has Sehun's lockcode, is laying across his bed already, thumbing through a book.

His face splits with a smile when he sees Sehun, pulls him into bed with him, kissing already at his shoulder, along his neck.

"Don't want to have sex," Sehun breathes, voice thick with emotion, slow with intoxication, and Tao, Tao who he has invited inside numerous times just for this purpose, he only nods. Slow and understanding. He holds him instead, face to face, arms looped around Sehun's waist, eyes dark and beautiful. "I'm a bad person, Tao," he confesses helplessly. "I'm a bad man. I'm the Big Bad Wolf."

Tao shakes his head, drags him even closer, presses even tighter.

And in the softness of moonlight, with them face to face like this, Tao's eyes cast golden—wrong—in the light, but his fingers are sure, steady, and he's a safe place, Sehun decides. A safe place to fall apart.

 

When Sehun wakes up, Tao is gone.

 

Sehun, hunter that he is, he's given another map. Harder this time. Told to study electricity, water patterns. Most wolf packs, they have two or more dens. The official, Department address. And the one they use for hunting, the other for hiding out in times of strife.

Northern quadrant still. There's something there. And Sehun makes his findings known, is dragged along on another expedition.

In the deep of the woods, they find a child. Wolf, Sehun knows, from the bracelet at his wrist. Terrified also from the slope of his shoulders, the width of his black, black eyes.

He's a tiny thing. Three or four by the looks of it. A teetering toddler, barefoot and overalled. Young, young enough, he's still a human child. Chubby and cute with shock of black hair, wide, too-bright eyes.

"You were right," Minseon says, reaching out for him. And the boy just _stares_ , tears shining in his eyes. Minseon extends her arms further, curls her fingers in a beckoning gesture, a fake, fake smile on her beautiful face. And the toddler—the still human toddler—shuffles closer, still on the verge of tears.

And no, no, _no_.

Minseon scoops his up, balances him on her hip.

This close to the woods, alone, he's been effectively abandoned. He can be taken in. Negligence. Criminal negligence. And Minseon notes as much with a low voice. That will draw the pack out, desperate to save their baby. They can force a confession.

And Sehun reflects on how jarring it is to watch somebody speak such cruel, calculating words while cradling a small child. A small, _human_ child. She coos to him still, as Tao gapes. He arches into it.

At Minseon's side, Sanghyuk is bending forward to read the name on his wrist. The boy releases a small gurgling sound at the movement, laughs wetly. "Two Moons. Tao's, Joonmyun's pack."

Sehun's breath catches in his throat.

Minseon stiffens slightly at that, shifts the boy on her hip, and he clings to her. Unknowing.

"You want to steal him," Sehun tries. Minseon is team leader, this decision it's Minseon's call. Out of his control.

And Minseon simply blinks at him, drags her fingers though the child's dark, dark hair. "Take him in for questioning," she amends.

"He's a kid," Sehun counters, reasons, and Minseon's eyes shutter off, become hard. "We should take him back."

"A wolf," she corrects.

Sanghyuk shifts uneasily, makes this strangled sound of distress.

"He's a _child_."

Minseon's eyes not meeting his eyes now. Kyungsoo's hands are clenching and unclenching at his sides. "Questioning. We're taking him in for questioning."

"He's a _child_ ," and Sehun knows his tone is near hysterical now. Notes how Chanyeol winces. "He's a fucking _baby_."

His voice rises helplessly, desperately at the end, startling, and the boys starts to cry, silent, lip trembling. Minseon soothes, and it's so fucked up. So fucking fucked up.

"You _know_ that. He hasn't even changed. He won't for at least 8, maybe 9 years."

Minseon winds her arm even tighter. Sanghyuk, Sehun tries Sanghyuk. "Heroes, they don’t—how are we going to kidnap a _child_?"

Sehun reaches for him, and the child goes easily enough, crying harder now. He curls into him. His face burrows into Sehun's skin. Sehun bounces him on his hip, soothes, and the boy's arms tighten around his shoulders. "I am going to take him back to his pack," he decides. "I'm going to take him back, and they can come into questioning of their volition."

Minseon watches him for a long, long beat. She is half, a Kim, too. She has a cousin—Joonmyun—on the other side, full-blooded and assimationist on their own side, too. That's extra reason to be sympathetic, would have been reason in other cases maybe. But in Minseon's case, it's extra license to be hard, prove her loyalty. She's proving now, Sehun tries to reason, she's making her allegiance known.

She doesn't say anything as she continues to stare, searching for something, Sehun thinks, in his eyes, before deciding, too, nodding minutely. "Take him back."

"Are you okay?" Sehun murmurs, pulling back enough to brush the boy's bangs back, and Sehun knows he's not. The boy is still crying, big fat tears rolling down his cheeks. Messy and ugly, small mouth opening and closing with hitching whines. "It's okay," he tries, instead, bouncing him, running his hand a little clumsily, but hopefully soothingly down the boy's back. The boy just presses his face tighter into the crook of Sehun's neck, sobbing in it, his small shoulders shaking beneath Sehun's unsteady palm. "It's okay, we'll take you back home. It's okay."

The team had left, and it's just the two of them, the little boy crying, Sehun stutter stepping, trying to follow the coordinates he had typed into his GPS.

"I know your Alpha," Sehun continues. "He's my friend. I know your Alpha, and I'm gonna take you back to him, okay. You don't have to worry anymore. You'll be back home."

The boy stops crying then, and Sehun takes to pointing at the trees. "So green, so big, right. They'll be perfect for running in when you get old enough."

And the boy nods slowly, solemnly, lip still trembling, but hands still clinging.

"I used to climb trees when I was very small,” Sehun continues. "You'll be able to climb trees, too. I'll tell your pack to show you. It feels like you're flying."

"Flying," the boys says simply, wetly, and Sehun smile uncertainly, hopefully. "Want to fly. Too small."

"I was small, too," Sehun confesses as he rounds another tree, approaching a clearing. "So small, but I got so big. It's okay."

"Too small," the boy grumbles. "Runt. Alpha says—Alpha says that it's okay to be small, but—" His eyebrows pinch in annoyance. "It's _not_. He only says because—it's _not_."

"Chanshik," Sehun hears somebody—Tao—scream then, and the boy stiffens in his arms. "Chanshik, oh my god. Chanshik. Are you okay?"

Tao clambers to get into Sehun's space, grabbing at the boy, jostling him. He kisses both cheeks, presses his forehead against his, and the boy—Chanshik—starts to cry again. "Yes, Uncle Taozi," he's hiccuping. "I'm sorry."

Tao is crying, too. His eyes are red-rimmed, cheeks tear-streaked, and his entire body is shaking. "He's mine," he's telling Sehun, not pausing to register Sehun's mild alarm, turning instead to nuzzle his nose into Chanshik's cheek. "You're mine, and you're safe now." And Chanshik presses closer, as if to underscore his point. "And it's okay. It's okay. I'm not mad. I'm not mad."

Sehun shifts awkwardly, and Tao's smile is teary when he turns it in Sehun's direction. It's disarmingly beautiful nonetheless. “He—I was watching the others, and he wandered. He's not supposed to wander. I didn't count until I got back, and oh my god, Chanshik." He kisses him again. On the nose. "Thank you. I have to thank you."

Tao surges forward then. He hugs Sehun tightly with Chanshik in tow. He stays close afterwards, his bicep, Chanshik's toes brushing against Sehun's skin.

"He's mine," he repeats. "He's precious to me."

“Your—"

And Tao shakes his head firmly, laughs, kisses Chanshik once more for good measure. This time on his temple. "No, he's mine. I take care of the children."

And that doesn't—

"But alphas, they don't..."

"Uncle Taozi is not Alpha," Chanshik protests, twisting in Tao's arms to look at Sehun. There's a certain finality in his tone, judgment in his small eyebrows, too.

Tao's eyebrows furrow, too, face briefly confused, then decidedly amused. His eyes and nose crinkle in mocking mirth. "Yeah, I'm not," he declares.

Sehun blinks in surprise. "But I thought, because you—"

"Because I'm tall," he laughs. "Because I've stuck my—been inside you." And there's no heat, no anger behind his words, like there once was. Might have been. There's just a fond sort of disbelief. "Hunters could never deign to be f—taken by an omega?"

Embarrassed, it takes him a while to recover. Sehun blinks rapidly, bites back several weak retorts before responding. "You're an omega?" Sehun tries. "You watch the children in your pack. Because you're an unmated omega? The house father."

"It's nothing so…crass." Tao's nose curls in distaste. Chanshik reaches out to smooth the wrinkle with his tiny, tiny fingers. Tao grasps his small wrist, kisses his fingers before letting them fall. "I'm a useful member. I can hunt. I can kill, too. I defend my own. I just—I like the babies. They like me."

Tao tickles Chanshik's side, and as if to prove his point, Chanshik pulls on the loose fabric of his tanktop, buries his small, giggly face into the tan expanse of Tao's broad shoulder.

"You saved him," Tao continues, shifting Chanshik to his other hip. "I know you're not a werewolf, but if you were you'd be—It doesn't matter. You have to come with me. We have to thank you. I'm inviting you to our home."

His palm is warm, soft in Sehun's. It's the first time they've held hands not midfuck. Their fingers threaded together, Chanshik's fingers playing idly with the strings of Sehun's hoody, they make their way to Tao's, Chanshik's house.

"I sent out the call. They know everything is okay. Know you made everything okay."

 

Sehun, he doesn't miss the gravity of this invitation.

Werewolves, they're not quite human. Not right, not enough, Sehun would have said months ago. Different, he now amends. Distinct. Not wrong. Tao, Chanshik, they're not _wrong_. Not defective.

Just—just okay.

And they're reclusive, withdrawn, wary, not welcoming. Not usually.

Certain activists, anthropologists, social scientists, werewolfologist, too, _soft_ people—Sehun's father would have derided—people, people like Sehun, they often assert that werewolves valuable by virtue of their existence alone. Their cognizance, too. They’re human enough, after all, to scream their dissent. To speak, cry, love.

And they’re humans—almost humans—living in a vastly different social structures than our own. Less nuclear family, more clan. But even more intense. Their society is something communitarian, communal, usual. Shared food, fortune, homes.

Until the Change, then they break off into groups. Communal then, too, they are social creatures. The new groups consists of a pack leader—the Alpha— then the subsequent letters of the Greek alphabet.

And there’s complexity in that, too, a hierarchy, subculture comprised of it’s own secret language, secret codes.

This—what Sehun is being allowed to see—it's rare.

 

"Alpha's not home yet," Tao is interrupting, pausing at the door. "You'll have to meet with the others. They have to thank you, too."

And with that, they're stepping inside.

Two Moons, because of the Kim patronage, they're better off than some other packs, have more money, more resources, but even then it's simple, small even. Wooden. There are 4 bedrooms. One large living room with mats, pillows, bedding stacked high in the corner (They sleep together, Sehun has read. Separate only for sex, but there’s not much shame, secrecy about that either). A television. A small table. Mats on the floor, too, where the pack is seated.

Upon their arrival, a man, a woman attempt to rise, greet, but another—at the very end, makes a motion, and they fall back. They coo instead, through tears, Chanshik's name, and Chanshik smiles, opens and closes his fist in greeting.

Tao had informed them, he had reassured Sehun, but the members are still alarmed, quiet. "He's the hunter," Tao explains, toeing off his shoes, urging Sehun to do the same. _The Hunter_ , they know who he is. They know what he does. "He brought Chanshik back," Tao continues. "He _saved_ him."

Sehun shifts awkwardly, tries to protest that really it's not—

But Tao insists on dragging him to the middle of the moon, cotton socks catching on the wooden floor.

They introduce themselves in quick succession. Yixing, Lu Hua, Seulgi, Seunghwan, Liyin, Jia, Dongwoo, Jongdae. There are children, too in the corn of the room. On an old mattress, a pink fitted sheet, a young mass of tangled limbs, toys in front of them. And they're around Chanshik's age, shift to make room for him, when Tao sets him down, but it is Tao that introduces them. Chanshik, Jongin, they're Liyin's and Jongdae's. Junghwan, Sunwoo, they're Dongwoo's and Seunghwan's. But really, really they're his. Tao watches them. Tao feeds them.

"It's werewolf code," Tao divulges, fingers lacing through Sehun's, behind Sehun's back. "You're offered membership in the pack. Beta status." He motions to Yixing, who smiles hesitantly at him. "At the very least food. The choicest cut. Wolf form. You're supposed to tear out their throats."

Sehun grimaces, and Tao, Chanshik laugh.

Yixing raises his hand, motions to Lu Hua who rises swiftly, exists the house.

"We have sent her to the grocery store on your behalf," Yixing informs him, and there's authority in his aura, even as slow-moving and soft-spoken as he is. He's urging Sehun closer, offering his seat, reaching for another mat. "In the absence of our Alpha, I'm going to offer you my seat. For saving our youngest." And Sehun sees that his mat, coarse as it is, worn and thin around the edges, it's nicer than the others. Softer. A darker color. This is their luxury. This is their gratitude.

An omega, Tao sits on the other hand, and Sehun next to Yixing, Jongdae, far far away from his most concrete tie.

They start up a stilted conversation after a while. Jongdae, Chanshik and Jongin's father, he watches soccer. He cheers for Korea, much to his mate's chagrin. And Sehun has absorbed enough games via osmosis at bars, overheard enough of Minseon's and Taekwoon's impassioned discussions to piece together a decent enough understanding. He can hold his own in a conversation, though a little poorly as Jongdae becomes animated, loud.

Lu Hua returns after a while. Liyin, Tao, Dongwoo disappear into the kitchen. And Lu Hua joins in the conversation, too, her legs draped across Seulgi's lap.

It's easier after that, falling into the lull of conversation, punctuated with the occasional child's giggle, the clink of utensils in the kitchen, the sizzle and pop of meat.

Barbecue. Meat, lettuce, sesame oil, banchan, jjiggae.

They finish the food quickly enough but have to set the table. Wait.

Sehun watches them to pass the time. They're all beautiful, Sehun thinks, pausing briefly to glance at them all. Dongwoo, bespectacled, long haired, the most delicate arch to his cheek, his chin. Jongdae, harsh and almost sharp with it, the corners of his mouth turning up in an amused smirk, the more Sehun squirms. Yixing, dimpled, sleepy-eyed regard, softer with it, subtle in it. And the women _especially_ , Liyin with her high cheekbones, Seunghwan with her liquid eyes, Jia with her sharp lines, Lu Hua with her delicate ones, they're all breathtaking, starling in their beauty.

"He's close," Tao says cryptically, eyes and voice distracted. "Knows something is wrong."

They fall into something again. Sehun's knees are tucked underneath his chin, listening more than speaking. But they make conversation at Tao's expense, talk about his strange habits. Tao, Jongdae reveals in a too loud pitchy declaration, is scared of the dark, of ghosts, of bugs, of sounds in the woods just outside their home. He shifts sometimes in his sleep, has to be held and calmed down. The look Tao gives him is _murderous_. The hand Liyin strokes up his thigh, warning. But Jongdae, emboldened by Sehun's helpless laughter, only continues. Tao's clothing, facial regime budget, his insistence on—

The door opens suddenly, then. Too hard. Angry. And Jongdae's laughter, his words die in this throat.

He's beautiful, Sehun notes, dimly registers. Handsome. Tiny. He's dressed simply, breathing hard through his mouth. And there's an aura of authority in his presence. And yeah, Joonmyun’s the Alpha, Sehun realizes. There's no _mistaking_ it.

Joonmyun's eyes are guarded, shuttered off, and his jaw is clenched. He's small but imposing, intimidating, and Sehun really doesn't know how anybody could miss it, the confidence, the command in his presence. Why they didn't already know. He doesn't know how others could ever doubt it.

He's the alpha, and he's angry, his eyes and voice hard. Something too fast, low for Sehun to pick up, spoken to the others.

Tao stiffens in his periphery. His hand trembling near his thigh.

Joonmyun's gaze shifts to him, and Sehun squirms beneath the scrutiny. Inadequate, an imposter, he forgets that he was invited. That he's earned this honor. Werewolf code, Tao had said.

 _I saved Chanshik_ , he almost wants to argue then. _Your omega, your beta, they invited me. Your pack welcomed me in_.

"So you're Tao's plaything," he observes quietly, and his voice is cruel, his words laden with disdain. And yes, this is how things should be, Sehun realizes. Joonmyun knows how things are supposed to be between humans and wolves, the hunter and their quarry.

He knows. Sehun had allowed himself to forget.

He's a tiny, tiny man, but he's turning his attention fully on him. Eyes dark, heavy, unwelcoming, and Sehun feels further intimated, suddenly flayed open, nonetheless. He shifts uncomfortably in his clothes, anxious, inadequate, too.

And Joonmyun is stepping further into the darkening room, asking Dongwoo if the food is ready so they can get this ritual over with.

 

Sehun maybe isn't the best at reading environments sometimes, likes to give the benefit of a doubt, too, but Joonmyun explicitly displeased with his presence. And this meal, Sehun's reward for this night, it's awkward, tense.

Sehun, as the man of the hour, sits beside him, stiff, intimidated, swallowing thickly, shifting uncomfortable, staring at his food in an effort to avoid Joonmyun's gaze.

Seated at the opposite end, Tao fusses over the toddlers, scoops rice, presses lettuce wraps, wipes their faces, coos. And the rest of the pack, feeding off of Joonmyun's quiet, quiet anger, are quiet, too. But contemplative. Guarded.

These are the perks, though, of being the guest of honor. Icy and disdainful as Joonmyun is. The food is delicious, filling, and there's a certain beauty in it, too. Watching this group's dynamics, being a part of it, too. Belonging to this.

Jongdae, Yixing clear the table. The babies are put to rest in the living room, and Sehun watches them for a while. Or tries. Chanshik has warmed up to him after all, assures the others in a pitchy prattle that he's really nice. He held hands with Uncle Taozi. And yes, he smells funny—like food, Sunwoo cuts in, wrinkling his nose in distaste—but he said he was small and he got big, too. Just like Chanshik will. He's nice.

Sehun crouches down fully when Jongin nods in acquiescence, eyes still guarded, but more sympathetic. He rests his palm on Sehun's knee, then, deems his safe and lies back again him. Chanshik, Sunwoo, Junghwan take that as invitation to press tighter, too, curling around him, fussing with his clothes. Junghwan mutters about how much Sehun smells like food as he climbs up his back, presses his mouth to the side of Sehun's neck. Sehun shudders, and he bites his hair instead, laughs pitchily. Sunwoo nibbles on his denimed knee with a laugh, too. Jongin flops across his lap. And Sehun is tangled in a mess of squirming mix of giggling toddler limbs, poking at tummies, cheeks, subject to wandering knees, elbows, chins.

Dongwoo comes and picks them up after a while, says they need their rest.

And Sehun is left alone again. He rises clumsily, flutters purposelessly, idles helplessly before Tao reaches out, startling him with a hand at the small of his back.

"He wants to talk to you," Tao says softly, motioning with his chin. "You're supposed to negotiate your prize, you know. Outside. Alone."

Sehun grimaces, and Tao smiles.

"He won't bite,” Tao assures with a smile. "I made him promise."

 

The sun has gone down already, and Joonmyun looks even smaller like that, sitting with his elbows resting on his denimed knees, feeding logs into the fire.

"Sit," he says. And Sehun does.

They do so, together, in silence for a long, long while, before Joonmyun finally speaks.

"I would ask as to your intentions," he murmurs, face harsh, pale in the campfire's licking shadows. His lips look even redder, eyes even darker, cooler. "But I think you've been quite clear, right? You want sex. Want to be fucked by a forbidden thing?"

There's bitterness there. Joonmyun's judgement, disapproval.

And Sehun jerks but doesn't rise to the bait. He stares at Joonmyun for a long beat, and he can see the pulsing of a vein, an angry vein in Joonmyun's temple. Restrained anger. Danger. Danger. Danger.

He'd promised not to bite, but Sehun is alarmed to realize he just doesn't _care_.

"A forbidden thing that wants to fuck me back," he breathes finally, and Joonmyun's jaw tightens. "Comes inside me and on me and for me every week." And Joonmyun's fist clenches, too. "I really don't see why my intentions are any of your concern."

"He's my omega," Joonmyun states simply. "He's precious to me. He's precious."

And there's possession in his tone. Beneath that worry, maybe. Concern, too.

"Precious to me, too," Sehun counters. "I'm not going to—"

"I'm not okay with your arrangement,” Joonmyun interrupts. "Not anymore. There's no longterm to this. "No mutually beneficial ending to this. It's too messy as is, and it's not worth it on our end. Unless, unless you're gonna give more. Unless you have more to offer."

And _oh_. Sehun's stomach twists painfully, nausea rising in his throat.

"What more could you want of me?" he finds himself saying nonetheless. "Money, laxer vigilance—"

"Freedom," Joonmyun interrupts. "We want freedom. True freedom," he continues, heedless, it seems of the danger in his words. "For your entire structure to crumple. For your station, your job, to be obsolete."

Sehun swallows hard. "You're with—"

Joonmyun's laugh is brash, overloud. " _Hardly_. You're still so disgustingly hunter, Oh Sehun. Still see any wolf that has the _audacity_ to want more, that doesn't immediately come running with his tail between his legs, come begging for your scraps of compassion, you see them as a threat. Why would I want you anywhere _near_ any of my pack?"

And no, that isn't what this is about at all, Sehun sees.

"No, he's made his choice," Sehun decides, bristling, pressing back. "Your omega, he's insubordinate, a free thinker. He keeps seeking me out of his own volition."

Joonmyun's eyes, spine, voice harden. "I'm going to ask you to stop indulging him." And it's an old argument, Sehun realizes. Tao's been _fighting_ for this. And his skin is stupidly suffused with warmth at that realization.

"No, not as long as he keeps choosing me. And he'll keep choosing me. That's what terrifies you, isn't it? That he'll keep choosing me."

Sehun is drunk with that revelation, the heady rush of power, of affirmation. He is wanted back. Wanted in turn. Wanted in spite of.

Joonmyun stares at him again, and Sehun feels the full weight of his authority, his anger, his power, the power vibrating just beneath the surface.

He won't bite, Tao had promised.

He would, if Tao hadn't made him. Would happily tear out his throat.

"You humans, you always fucking _take_. Your fucking job is to hurt us. You—you report back all of our doings. You choke us alive. You take—" Joonmyun exhales slowly, face tight with anger. "And you still—you still want more. There's nothing left for you to take."

"Sex, there's sex still at least." And he knows he's hit a nerve when Joonmyun blinks, fingers twitching near his thighs. Slight, small. He's so small. This man—this wolf—that seeks to control Tao. "And it's not taking if it's freely offered. _Enthusiastically_ offered."

It takes Joonmyun a long, long time for him to collect his thoughts enough to proceed.

"It's rare," he states finally, tone still disarmingly chilly. "Hunters, sorry, _Junior Officers_ , saving werewolves. It's rare. Rare, commendable. You're different, but not different enough, and I still fucking _hate_ you."

Sehun doesn't respond, and Joonmyun sighs. His shoes scrape against the gravel at his feet. "Chanshik, he's his favorite, you know. The youngest. But we value all our lives. Love our children, too." And there's sincerity in his tone, then. Gratitude, begrudging though it may be. "And Tao, he’ll—he'll have to answer for losing him, too. For giving you the window to _redeem_ yourself, but it's not enough for me."

"You've misread me," Sehun insists. Joonmyun locks eyes with him, doesn't let him look away.

"You can disengage," Joonmyun continues, venom seeping out, staining every word. "You can save Chanshik." His voice sounds strange, oddly full, vulnerable for it. "You can—you can be fond of Tao. You can do all this good and mean it, but ultimately you're still one of them. And the pain, the destruction that you and your kind have caused. That's why I _hate_ you. So I am asking you to _stop_. I am asking you to find another passtime."

And Joonmyun, Sehun can tell, he’s not used to being told “no.” But that’s what Sehun is doing no, insisting that he can and he _will_. He’s not gonna stop for Joonmyun’s pride’s sake.

Joonmyun's shoulders stoop in resignation, tension bleeding into them, defeat into his eyes. "Well, then, tell your team leader to remember her blood. Remember her place."

"Tell her yourself. Tell them also that you're not involved with Kikwang's pack. Lie if you need to."

Joonmyun's head jerks with a nod.

Tao steps out then, hands shoved into his pants pocket. "Done?" he tries, catching Joonmyun's eyes. There's an entire conversation in their gaze, but tension, too. And Sehun gets the distinct impression he's intruding. Something ugly constricts his chest.

But Tao is smiling at him easily enough, deciding something it seems. He falls in step behind him, pressing unnecessarily, distressingly close. Tao threads his fingers through his, and it's so easy to get caught up in the daze of Tao, then. So easy to get lost in him.

It's Friday after all.

 

Tao holds his hand the entire way home.

"Your Alpha hates me," Sehun starts to tell him at several points, several landmarks along the way, but Tao just squeezes his hand hard, painful, laughs and points to a tree, a flower, an interesting license plate, a small dog, his floor mat.

"Your Alpha _hates_ me," he notes, as Tao pins him against his door, knee pressing insistently between his thighs, creating the sweetest ache, provoking the softest moans. Tao forces it even harder with a breathy laugh.

"You talk so, so much, Little Red," Tao groans, tugging Sehun's hoody off his shoulder, leading him back onto Sehun's mattress. He kisses him breathless and helpless on his bed, tugging all the while at his clothes.

"He hates me," Sehun repeats needlessly, pulling back from the plush perfection of Tao's lips.

"He's jealous." And no, Sehun thinks, that venom, that ire, it wasn't just jealousy. Wasn't so petty. Wasn't so inconsequential. But Tao is doing the most _amazing_ job at this, tongue warm and succulent on the hollow of his throat, and Sehun decides to humor him.

"What right does he—?" he pants.

"What right do _you_?"

Sehun concedes the point easily enough as Tao kisses a lazy trail down his stomach, breathing softly against trembling, sensitive skin.

"It's different between you, right?" Sehun breathes, sitting up slightly, cupping Tao's face. "Different between wolves?"

"You want to _talk_?" Tao's voice is light, teasing, and he mouths at the waistband of Sehun's boxers. His lips drag in the most enticing, distracting way.

"It's kinda hot," Sehun counters. Tao hums, scrapes his teeth, smirks against Sehun's skin at his full-bodied shudder. "Thinking of you being pinned. Getting fucked _hard_."

And it's Tao's turn to shudder.

"Do omegas, do they always bottom? Spread their legs for it?"

And Tao groans. It washes hot against Sehun's aching, clothed cock. He covers it easily with a laugh, deprecating and judgmental, chiding. "You're always so _crass_ , you humans. So unrefined. So simplistic."

"Enlighten me, then," Sehun urges, twisting a hand in Tao's hair, tugging experimentally, biting back a groan at the way that Tao's eyelashes flutter, chasing the movement. Sehun breathes hard, tugs again, and Tao sucks his lower lip into his mouth, whimpers now.

"So you could with an Alpha for instance? Could be inside him instead?"

Tao's eyes turn wistful, and his smile is a small, secret thing. "Could. Would. With the right Alpha. The perfect Alpha. It's not about the position. It's about control with werewolves. Negotiated control. What the wolf wants."

And that makes something like insecurity constrict in Sehun's chest. It feels also like an admission, a reminder of their incompatibility in anything but this. He doesn't want that.

"But what about with humans? What about with me? Are you always wishing somebody was fucking _you_ whenever we're together? Do you want me to fuck you instead?"

Tao doesn't reply, and Sehun uses the hand in Tao's hair to press him _down_. Tao goes willingly, licks a long, wet stripe at the strained denim of Sehun's erection. Sehun's hips press back of their own volition, and Tao pulls off briefly to tug down his zipper, drag his lips and tongue in an easy, eager display. He pays special attention to the tip, laving succulent kisses on the flared crown, moistening the fabric so it clings even tighter. It's the most exquisite torture, and Tao fucking smirks when Sehun's fingers go limp, body pliant, moaning carelessly for more. He's lost in it, but the moan Tao releases in turn, rasped, weak, it brings Sehun back to the question, the issue at hand.

"Can I fuck you?" Sehun asks, croons, cupping Tao's chin, and Tao's eyelashes flutter at the proposal, shuddering. He's affected in the most deliciously visible way, and Sehun's mind is foggy with the possibilities. He's drunk with it. Ever fucking aching for it. "Spread you open? Fuck you the way you want to be fucked?"

"No, that's for Alphas," Tao murmurs back, teasing, tight, words hot and lingering against the pulse of Sehun's erection. "And you're _hardly_ an Alpha, Little Red. I can't be assured that you even know _how_ to fuck."

Sehun rises too easily to the bait, tangling his fingers in Tao's hair, forcing his neck sharply back. Tao's throat bobs. "Let me. Let me."

"You have to _earn_ it," he counters breathlessly. "You haven't earned it." But he comes easily enough when Sehun coaxes him upwards, opens easily enough for Sehun to lick his way into Tao's plush, perfect mouth.

"Let me earn it, then," Sehun urges against the seam of Tao's mouth, words dragging there. He doesn't miss the shudder that the action provokes, the distressed kiss of Tao's eyelashes against Sehun's cheekbone. Affected.

"How, Little Red?"

"Sehunnie," Sehun corrects softly, scraping his fingers along the tight cotton of Tao's shirt. His fingers linger at the small of Tao's back, dragging there along the peek of warm, soft skin, provoking the most muted little tremors. He grounds himself there. "I need you to help me along, Tao. What would an Alpha do?" he tries. "How would an Alpha fuck you?"

"You're not an Alpha," Tao laughs again, more strained now, body trembling as Sehun's hands wander further south, beneath the waistband of his jeans, dragging over smoother, softer, more delicate skin. "No, I think you'd be an omega. Just like me." Sehun's fingers continue down, down, down, teasing at warm, puckered skin, and Tao muffles a gasp. Grinds down and back more purposefully. The stiffness of his denimed erection scrapes against Sehun's bared navel.

"Really?" Sehun protests, pressing more firmly know, and the skin dances against the callous of his fingertips. So hot, so responsive.

" _Yes_ , you'd be small, too," Tao decides, in a breathless moan. "The smallest, most beautiful, most precious wolf. Just fucking _begging_ to knotted. Begging to be pinned. Begging to be fucked. Begging your alpha to go harder, trying to fuck back, helpless as you are. You'd be so fucking _eager_. So fucking _easy_. "

But right now it's Tao that's begging, wordlessly, communicating his need with his body, arching into the insistent press of Sehun's probing fingers, burying his moans into Sehun's throat.

"Is that what it's about?" Sehun groans. "Is that what it takes?" He allows himself the barest, most fleeting penetration, and his other hand scrapes across Tao's scalp, down to tease over the nape of his neck, squeezing there hard. "Do you like—not being in control? Like feeling weak, helpless?" His thumbnails teases, scrapes against the rim of Tao's entrance, and Tao's tremor is full-bodied.

"Yes," Tao confesses through a wrecked moan, his face pinching in the most distressingly beautiful way. " _Yes_."

"Stay here."

Tao rolls onto his back, spreading his legs obscenely, smirking, as Sehun stumbles out of bed, rifles through his drawers. Tao peels off his clothes, touches himself, moaning softly as he waits.

Sehun spares him a glance, and Tao—like that, naked and aching and writhing on his bed, touching himself for Sehun's benefit—right then, he's everything that Sehun's ever wanted. Anything he could ever want.

There's alarm, fear, dread in the realization. And Sehun reflects just briefly, just awfully on how _utterly_ fucked up that is, all things considered. There's no mutually beneficial end to this, Joonmyun had warned. No happily ever after. No win. They should cut their losses. They should just stop fooling themselves.

But no, Sehun smothers that thought, compartmentalizes that insecurity. Later, for later, when he's alone, teeming with insecurity, with self-loathing. He smirks now, wants now, decides to prove himself now so he can fuck Tao. Now.

Sehun holds up the charm, palm up. Wolfsbane. It's the size of a 500 won coin, the poison encased behind with silver, Jaehwan's invention. It's one of many meant to protect his home. Potent.

The moment, the mood is lost—briefly—as Tao wrinkles his nose disdainfully.

"I can't," Sehun starts, "not the way that a werewolf or alpha can, but I thought—"

Tao shakes his head, kinder now. Exasperated almost.

"You would think that in killing and torturing us for all those milenia, you would think you would have learned by now. It's a wonder you've even been able to…" Tao trails off. Shakes his head. His bangs fall in his eyes. His hands move to his sides, motioning as if to impress his point. "It's ridiculous, you know. How little you know. How little you _care_ to know. Even, even when it serves you."

"Enlighten me," Sehun presses again, and Tao sucks his lower lip into his mouth. Deliberating. Entirely too solemn, pensive, considering he is still naked, hard, tracing absent fingers along his own waist. He shivers at his own touch. "Tell me," Sehun insists.

Because Sehun keeps fucking _giving_. His body, his intel, his feelings, too. His affection in the afterglow.

And Tao, Tao isn't giving nearly as much. Joonmyun, he'd understood it wrong, this thing that Tao and Sehun have. Was angry because Tao was giving more, he'd argued, but that's not true. It's always, always Sehun, and he really—

Tao seems to sense it, too. He sits up, draw his bare legs to his chest and grips Sehun's hand in his own, tugging him forward. Sehun straddles his waist, resting on the solid warmth of his thighs. Tao's voice is soft as he divulges. "This only really works on unmated wolves. Virgins. Most potent on them," he says quietly, reaching out for it, but Sehun grips it tight, out of reach. Tao's eyebrows raise in amusement.

"It reacts with the hormones, you know," he continues."We have all this excess energy. Unchannelled aggression. The wolf, unless he's being sated, he's violent, easy to distract, hurt."

Sehun's stomach twists at the thought of what that must look like, between Tao and other wolves. Their channeled aggression. Their more lasting interactions.

Tao's breath hitches, nostrils flare, catching the scent of Sehun's sick, shameful halfway formed arousal.

"Jinyoung," Tao manages. "It would have worked on Jinyoung. The unmated or the otherwise sexually frustrated. It feeds on the aggression, the testosterone. Those wolves that used to ravage maidens, those wolves that used to steal sheep, they're all the same."

"All the big bad wolves of yore, they've all been horny?"

Tao laughs. Loud and abrasive, drags Sehun further into his lap, running distracting fingers up and down his clothed spine. "Yes. And it's still—it's not pleasant—" He reaches for the charm, and this time Sehun lets him touch it, balance it on his palm. "It's bitter smelling, but it's also—your smell drowns it out." He leans forward inhales deeply, and in his chest, Sehun's heart stutters, lurches. "Your smell, your arousal, it drowns everything else out. All that's left, is the faintest magic. It kind of tickles, hurts in a good way." His voice deepens there.

"Almost like being with a wolf? Almost like fucking an Alpha? Joonmyun?"

Tao's laugh is strained, and Sehun moves forward slowly, more than enough time to Tao to pull away, wrap his fingers around Sehun's wrist to halt his movement. He doesn't though, watches Sehun instead through heavy, imploring eyes. Sehun presses the charm to Tao's skin, watches the skin protest, pop, just the slightest, a faint red line in the aftermath. Tao moans, slick lips parting, dark brow furrowing as he arches towards it, and the ripple of his muscles is so fucking beautiful.

"We're the only ones that matter right now," he reminds him, voice distressingly soft, considering the way he's started stroking his thumb just beneath the head of his own cock.

His head lolls forward, crashing against Sehun's throat, and he's nosing along trembling skin, trying to wrench back control with a lazy bite to Sehun's neck. So Sehun presses the medallion even harder, catches Tao's subsequent breathless whimper with his mouth.

"It tickles," he groans. "Makes me feel weak, whoozy, like I'm drunk almost, everything is slowmoving, but sharper. Reminds me of what I am. _Fuck_."

Sehun pulls back, tries, to gauge his reaction, but—

"Again," Tao groans. "Harder," he adds.

Relinquishing control, trusting, trusting, trusting.

Sehun scrapes it across Tao's nipples, notes the way they pucker with a moan. And with Tao pitched like this, Sehun is witness to the beautiful rapid rise and fall of his chest. The strain and release of muscles, jumping beneath smooth, taut, beautiful skin. And like this, Sehun is witness, also, to the way Tao's lips tremble, the way his eyes lid, his eyebrows pinch at Sehun's careful, careful, teasing movements.

Sehun takes it in his mouth, held between his teeth, drags it against Tao's throat, his collarbone, his chest, taking Tao's cock in his palm, stroking. "Omega," he rasps, and Tao shudders. He starts up an incessant whine, punctuated with broken, breathy pleas for faster.

"Kneel," Sehun orders, and Tao does. Distressingly fast. He falls back, bracing himself on clumsy knees. "I'm gonna suck you off, omega." Tao shudders so so hard.

And even like this, bent forward, tracing himself on one elbow, dragging teasing medallion-laced kisses along Tao's hips and thighs, Sehun is the one in control. And Tao is already falling apart. Just for him.

And it's all about Tao. Too much about Tao. Cheeks hollowed, fingers bruising, eyes hopelessly enamored.

Sehun transfers the charm to his free hand, presses it against the outside of his cheek as he suckles him inside, and Tao lets out the most ruined moan, shivering so violently threatens to collapse.

Sehun smirks against the head of Tao's cock, swirling his tongue along the underside, slurping, and Tao's hands fall to his face, his thumbs sloppy and affectionate along Sehun's cheekbones. He's trembling so fucking hard, hips moving into tiny, stuttered little fucks as Sehun glides forward and back.

"Please," he says, voice all broken.

And Sehun is overcome with a sudden swell of fondness, of maybe even something deeper and more terrifying. Sehun, he's in so fucking _deep_ , sucking Tao even deeper into his mouth, too, his throat protesting, his eyes watering, but his own cock straining straining straining.

"Fuck my mouth," he rasps out between sucks, pressing the medallion just outside the seam of his mouth now. Closer and more potent." _Omega_."

Tao sobs.

Ω

Tao's control is tearing at the seams, melting even as he fucks forward into the warm pliant wetness of Sehun's mouth. He'd been given permission. He'd waited to be given permission.

It's too perfect. This loss of control. This muted pain that he finds himself arching into, chasing, chasing. So good, it's so good.

He's helpless, helpless, helpless. But safe and protected, nonetheless. Sehun reining him in, controlling him.

It reminds him of who he is, of what he is, makes him feel _alive_ .

He's light-headed, dizzier, immersed purely in the sensations of it. Careless for it, but it's so fucking _good_ , his worlds, his needs colliding like this.

And his entire world narrows to Sehun's fingers, his lips, his tongue, the pleasure-pain of that medallion, sapping his strength, holding him captive. His nerve-endings are screaming, his lips parting on heady, ruined moans. He chases the sting, rubbing raw against the smooth skin of Sehun's inner cheek, the heavy burn through the pleasure.

And it's safe enough, he reassures himself. He's strong enough.

And he's being marked, again but in a different, kind of way. Claimed in a different kind of way. But they'll fade soon enough, he knows, transitory, ephemeral, inconsequential, like everything about this false courtship. Even if he doesn't quite want them, too. Even if he wants more. Again. Harder. Long-lasting.

Sehun's fingers on his hips are bruising, his mouth, his lips,his tongue around Tao's erection a searing wetness that has him barreling towards orgasm, just just barely holding on.

“Al—" he stutters, stops. "Sehun. Sehun. Sehun."

It's perfect, fucking everything.

But all too soon, he's arresting Tao's hips, his weakened hips, holding him steady. And Sehun pulls away, his lips swollen and shiny, dark eyes glittering up at him in blatant want. "Straddle me, Omega." There's command in his voice, raspy and affected as it is.

It's clumsy rearrangement, but Sehun is touching him soon enough, guiding him soon enough. Dragging him forward until he's sitting on Sehun's chest. His fingers painting in the most gorgeously tender way. Commanding still. Guiding still.

Further up, up, up, and Tao chokes on a gasp, hands scrambling for purchase on the embossed flowers of Sehun's wallpaper as Sehun delicately, devastatingly, deliberately licks his way inside.

It's hot slick, the most exquisitely slow, delicious penetration, dragging, dragging. Tao's jaw goes slack, and he grinds down into it, shaking, sobbing.

Sehun merely hums, slurps, and Tao jerks again, moans again. Pleads for him to continue. Sehun, mercifully, cruelly does, digging his thumbs into Tao's flesh, spreading him further for his questing tongue.

Over and over again. Perfect and perfect again.

Moved as he is, temporarily paralyzed as he is, he still has the presence of mind to touch himself, stroke himself in time with Sehun's exquisite pace, demanding further pleasure from this, greedy for it. As Sehun licks and licks and licks reduces him to a whimpering, jerking, limp, clumsy mess. Pure, trembling sensation, raw nerve endings, helpless moans.

 _Sehun, Sehun, Sehun, Sehun, Sehun_.

Sehun's soft, an Omega Tao had theorized, but he's still strong, can support his weight. Can demand further exposure from him, tilting him to thrust his tongue even deeper inside, his wonderful, wonderful mouth tasting ever single corner of his pulsing walls.

"You smell amazing," Sehun groans appreciatively, pulling away, biting down on his ass cheek, licking up to mouth at his balls, holding him open still. "Like sugar. Licorice."

"It's pheromones, I’m—"

"Your body thinks I'm an Alpha," Sehun smirks, swirling his tongue against the base of Tao's erection, letting the words graze there, heat and torture there. "Wants to be _fucked_."

And no it's more dangerous than that, worse than that. Tao is enamored, affected, fucked, in more ways than one. But Sehun he doesn't need to know that.

"Sehun," he whines, and Sehun pulls away to laugh against his thigh, tease the skin there with the sharp bite of his teeth, before he's spearing his tongue inside anew

And oh oh _fuck_.

"Has he earned it?" he rasps. Has this Alpha earned the right to fuck you?"

" _Yes_."

"On your back," he commands, and Tao shivers in response, complying eagerly.

Sehun holds him down, holds him steady, holds Tao as he should be held, as he aches to be held as he fucks him open with his fingers, pauses, looms over him with his cock.

And it isn't, there isn't the stretch, the almost painful fullness but it's still—still so fucking good. New, perfect, nonetheless.

Sehun presses Tao's legs back to his chest, to get the angle right, holds him immobile like that, presses inside.

Sehun doesn't pound into him. Like he should, in this play, he rocks slow and steady into him, the charm falls against his beating heart, has him sobbing, panting, begging.

Sehun moans, too, as he rocks into him, teeth dragging, cock dragging, fingers dragging, wonderful, wonderful medallion dragging, too. And Tao's skin is breaking again. Perfectly, exquisitely again.

Tao's legs drop, limp and trembling with pleasure, and Sehun continues, his movements are slightly hindered now, but no less eager, forceful.

Sehun bites down hard on his throat, over the imprint of Joonmyun's own claim, dragging still inside him, harder, sloppier, but deeper, deeper now. And Tao comes, untouched, just like that, from the ruin of Sehun's moans, the scrape of that medallion against his chest, the drag of his own cock against Sehun's navel.

And Sehun even dragging his lips like this, tasting his makeup, his concealment, scraping it off with his teeth, he's too far gone, thankful, overheated, affected, distracted to notice as Tao's body clenches tight. And Sehun pounds then, fucks then, folds him in half, at his whim, until he's groaning out his orgasm against Tao's throat.

Good so so so good, the solid weight of him collapsing fully on Tao's trembling, weak, ruined body.

Sehun pets over his skin affectionately as he recovers, dark hair falling in his dark eyes as he pulls back to touch Tao.

His eyes are very full, and his hands are soft in their devastation, in their regard, taking him apart piece by piece until he's sobbing for him, clinging to him. Tao feels so vulnerable, so small, so so so so special. This is _wrong_.

"My Omega," Sehun teases, wiping tenderly at the come on Tao's stomach, his chest.

Tao can't decide whether to balk or preen, settles instead for shuddering a little violently, capturing Sehun's wrist to pull him closer.

"What will it be like," Sehun starts, "When you find a mate?"

_When you return to him, when you stop indulging this transitory thing._

"Will sex be different then? Soul-sharing like it's supposed to be then?"

"It's different for us, you know," Tao divulges, dizzy still, dazed still, desperate still. "It doesn't have to be soul-sharing, but unless you're paying attention, that’s—that's what it winds up happening. The chemical cocktail, you know. Wolves, we're more sentimental than humans. Wilder and more instinctive, I think. We stick to what makes most sense to us. Stimulus and response, you know. Sex—good sex—affection, love, warmth."

"But what about…is that what it was like with those?"

"Those other people?" Tao laughs. "Jealous?"

"No, I just—"

"It's okay," Tao insists. "To have wanted us to be—That's okay."

And Sehun thumbs at the place between shoulder and neck, the faint bite mark. Fading already. Fleeting, Sehun is so fleeting. So inconsequential. Small, unimportant.

"You have to have a mate," Sehun reminds him, and Tao nods slowly, watching him carefully. "We'll stop then," Sehun breathes. "I'll stop then, I promise."

It takes Tao a long, long time to leave afterwards. He gets coaxed into kiss after kiss, lingering, affectionate touch after touch. And it's not until Sehun falls asleep, exhausted and beautiful, that he's able to extricate himself from Sehun's ever-persistent limbs. Reluctant and still dazed, still confused, Tao tugs on his clothes, stumbles outside.

 

Free of the haze, he can feel the sharp thickness of Joonmyun's emotions. Anger, hurt, conviction. But they're drowned out by his own own dread, despair.

There's an argument to be had. Consequences to be faced. Tao braces himself for the impact.

Joonmyun is in their bedroom, has locked the door.

Joonmyun is seldom angry, seldom with him. Joonmyun's eyes, though, they're burning with anger right now. His body tense with it, too. And the loopback, the sympathetic emotional response has Tao feeling angry, too. Bristling back. Fighting back. There's catastrophe in their arguments.

But it's delayed at least for the time being as Joonmyun peels Tao's clothes back, examines the red lines, proud and still painful to the touch. But Joonmyun touches them, traces them with his fingertips, something hard but unreadable in his eyes.

Tao lets him pull off his shirt, a soft curse falling from trembling lips at the scrape of denim, the snag of a zipper.

And they look in the much worse beneath their harsh fluorescent lights, beneath Joonmyun's harsh scrutiny. They look less transitory, ephemeral, inconsequential. They look like license enough for the concern, the anger glittering in Joonmyun's dark, guarded eyes.

"Tao," he finally says, concerned, and Tao shakes his head sharply.

"I…" Tao starts, stops, looking down at Joonmyun's mouth, unable to meet his eyes any longer. "I asked him to. With the medallion."

"Why would you?" And Joonmyun's hand is sliding beneath his chin, forcing his gaze back. "Why would you let him _hurt_ you?"

"I _wanted_."

Joonmyun sharpens, angles, eyes, voice become harder. And yes, the source of their conflict.

"You're careless, Tao. You're reckless." His tone, the patronizing edge it. It makes Tao resent. "You can't just trust him like that. You can't just—"

"I can, and I _did_. I chose, Alpha."

"You shouldn't," Joonmyun amends. "You can't trust him."

"He saved Chanshik. When is the last time somebody—And even with this, he made sure that I was okay, kept checking to make sure—"

"But he still _hurt_ you, Tao. He still wanted to hurt you. He's taking too many liberties. He's too comfortable. He tried to _mark_ you, Tao. Tried to claim you."

And again, that easy dismissal. Again that infuriating assurance that Tao doesn't understand when he does. That Tao is fucking up when he's not.

"I know him better than you do, Joonmyun," Tao insists. "I actually _know_ him. I know what I'm doing. He's sincere. He fucking _cares_ about me."

He wants. He wants. He wants, Tao explains, tries to impress upon him.

He'd asked Tao to call his name, had come so fucking _hard_ just for him. He wants Joonmyun to _understand_.

Sehun is trapped, Tao is too almost. Trapped in his entrapment. And he needs to find a way out. But he can't just pull back. Not as is.

And Sehun, he'd kissed reverently at his knee, his neck, petting his fingertips with the most exquisite care because he _cares_. And that's worth something. It's _worth_ something, Joonmyun. He'd do just about anything for Tao at this point, and that's worth something. It's worth so much.

"Something for you?" Joonmyun cuts in. "Or something for the pack?"

And Tao can feel the sharp jolt of Joonmyun's betrayal. Hot on his skin, thick in his veins. Stifling, not his own.

Tao pushes that feeling down. He focuses on his own. His own emtoins, they matter. They're valid. Not just Joonmyun's feelings, not just Joonmyun's wants.

" _Don't_." He bristles, tone icy, too. Icier in turn. "Don't fucking do that, Joonmyun."

"You're in to deep, Tao. You're in too deep to see. But you're getting careless here, too, Tao. You lost Chanshik, and you—"

"That was my mistake. That has _nothing_ to do with him."

"Doesn't it?" And Tao jerks at that, rises at that. "How often have you been thinking of him when you're supposed to be _here_ with us? Is this even about the mission for you anymore, Tao?" And there's something hard, something sharp in his voice then. Vulnerable, lashing out. "It isn't. You know it isn't, and you need to stop. Stop sleeping with him. Stop going back to him."

And Tao feels the push back, flinches back as if he's been slapped. Joonmyun, his Alpha, he's so small, so commanding, but still so small. And Tao feels it, the sudden potent loss of control and insecurity. The pain beneath the anger, the bitterness, the jealousy. Vulnerable.

But he swallows past it for his own feelings. His own. Not about Joonmyun. Not all the fucking time. There's manipulation in this, too. And Joonmyun, he's accusing.

"Just because I'm your mate, your omega, it doesn't mean you can command me like this, Joonmyun. You can't jerk me around like some puppy, like some puppet. You can't _accuse_ me like this. Doubt me like this. I'm not some omega for you to boss around."

"I have never—"

"You just did, Joonmyun." Joonmyun winces. Regret, desperation still churning beneath the surface. Joonmyun reaches out for him, squeezes his wrists hard, upsetting the wounds still healing on his skin. "I made a fucking call. You have to trust my calls. You have to trust that I know what I'm doing. You have to believe in me."

"I feel it Tao. I feel it, and i don't like it. I can't _bear_ it." His hands skate up, towards Tao's elbows, squeezing hard still. "And it's not worth it anymore. Not when he treats you like this. Plays with you like this. I'm not okay with that. And I'm not telling you to stop. I'm _asking_ you to. Not as your alpha, but as your mate. Please, Tao. Please."

"I can't, Joonmyun. Not yet."

"I'm asking you, Tao." He implores, dragging him closer, speaking against his chest. "I'm _begging_ you," he amends. "Please stop. Stop going back to him. Stay here with me."

Joonmyun's eyes catch his. They're soft, raw, red. He's crying Tao realizes. He's made his Joonmyun, his alpha, his mate, _cry_.

And the emotional dam, the wall he has erected to keep out Joonmyun's emotions, it cracks then. And he's inundated with them. The anger, the insecurity, the betrayal, the pain, the deep, deep, deep fathoms of pain.

"I'll tell him after this next meeting," he decides, melting into Joonmyun. It makes sense. It makes sense. "I'll tell him."

Joonmyun's kisses taste of tears, relief.

A

There's apology, but also loss in this for Tao. Pain in it, too. Because Tao, he is too fucking soft, too fucking fragile, and Joonmyun, he let it—

The fatigue, the anger, the hurt it's bearable like this. With Tao here like this. Even if he doesn't smell like his. Doesn't taste like this either. Had come marked in a different, wrong kind of way. Had, had wanted another—

"You're mine," Joonmyun whispers into the crook of Tao's neck, possessive still, insecure still, tangling his fingers in Tao's hair, making the angle sharper.The shadows are harsh, but beautiful against the prominent jut of Tao’s bobbing throat, his curling muscles. "You're mine. Only mine, Tao. My omega, my love, my mate."

"Yes, yours."

Ω

Tao knows, they weren't meant to last. They were doomed from the start. Fast approaching their expiration date, trying always against external forces, but Joonmyun—Joonmyun's disapproval, his anger, his jealousy, his hurt—;that had been the ultimate catalyst, one of many potentials, for this stilted, stuttering thing to come to a screeching halt.

Tao, he's approaching with dread, with despair.

Sehun's eyes are soft, smile softer.

Things they've changed, and this is gonna hurt them both. Sehun doesn't have the foresight to brace himself for impact.

"We have to talk," Tao starts, evading his touch, his kiss. Sehun's eyebrows pinch, lips pucker in confusion. Something like affection swells in Tao's chest, full almost to the point of overflowing, bleeding out.

"After," Sehun laughs, reaching out for him again, nimble fingers teasing over the buttons of Tao's shirt. "We can have _all_ the post-coital discussions." He drags him forward. "I haven't been able to stop thinking about you. Want to blow you so bad right now. Eat you out again."

"No, it's about that." Tao grips Sehun's wrists, forces them to his sides. "We have to _stop_."

Sehun jerks his hands free. “What—"

"We have to stop," Tao repeats. "Have to stop…seeing each other."

"Is this because of our argument? Because Joonmyun, he said that barring—"

"No, the circumstances have changed. He asked me to—"

Sehun's spine stiffens, betrayal and anger glitter in his dark, beautiful, too-wet eyes. "Commanded," he amends, icy, sharp. It cuts deep, intermixes with Tao's own indignation.

" _Asked_ ," he insists. "He _asked_ me, and he's right."

"But he wasn't last week when you let me fuck you. He wasn't right then?” Sehun’s scoff is overloud. "Fucking _spare_ me. He fucking ordered you, and you stopped playing insubordinate."

"I have to," Tao maintains, avoiding his eyes now. More open now, resigned now, unsure now. "I _have_ to. He's my Alpha. I can't. I have—"

"What do you _want_ from me?" Sehun interrupts, fervent, imploring. "What's your asking price, Omega? What will it cost me to fuck you again? For you to want me again?"

Tao winces, and there's apology almost in Sehun's angry tears.

"I'm not fucking stupid. I know what this is about, Tao."

It's not. It was, but it's not. Stop asking me to—

"But it wasn't that way for me. It hadn't been for a while. I care about you. I want you, Tao. Are you telling me that those nights, after the Moon Rites, after—after Chanshik that they really meant _nothing_ to you?"

_They can't_

"Yes."

"You're lying." And Sehun is crying, crying but trying to hide it. His voice is wavery and wet and wrong. "I _know_ you're lying. Please don't let him take this from us. Please don't just relent because he—"

"We _can't_." His voice is pitched low with firmness. _Stop, Sehun_.

“But I risked _everything_ for you," he insists, “And even then you won’t allow yourself to defy this—"

And Tao laughs. It's hollow, dark, mocking. Hard, so hard, impressing the point, devoid of all the feelings he's been trying to convince himself he doesn't have. It's so easy to fall into this character, so easy to make Sehun hate him.

"Everything for me. For _me_?"

“I—I put my job—"

"The job that has you attacking and hunting my kind? For me? You really think you did it for me?"

His eyes are guarded, then. “I—Tao, I—"

"Fucked me," Tao insists. "Cared for me, but that doesn't give you any sort of right. You have no fucking claim on me."

 _He does. You don't. He does_.

"Did I really not mean—;?"

"Stop," Tap says.

And Sehun reaches out for him, tugs him forward, crashing their mouths together in a last, awful attempt.

Sehun's kiss is desperate, hard, Sehun's arms winding around his waist, fingers scrambling, digging painfully into his skin as he groans into his mouth, as if trying to memorize the planes of it. Savor his last taste. Tao wrenches himself free with a bitten off sob.

"Please," he says, and Tao pulls back

"I can't," he says. "Let me go."

Sehun's fingers go limp, release. And this is what it's like to break.

♂

He'd been solemn, serious, none of the usual teasing sharpness in his eyes, his smirk. Sehun had known something was wrong. Had braced himself for the worst. But he hadn't thought—fuck, he hadn't thought that it would be this.

Sehun's lips are still bruised from that last desperate thwarted, rejected kiss, affection. His stomach folds smaller and smaller and smaller. Chest bruising, imploding, too.

Tiny, tiny, he can't breathe, but he still somehow manages to sob and sob and sob.

They weren't meant to last, Sehun knew that. On borrowed time. But he'd hoped, after that last time, he'd fucking hoped that it had meant more, that Tao would fight more.

And Sehun knew—or at the very least should have known—that in approaching the wolf, the feral, he risked getting bitten, risked getting hurt. But it still too strong for him to bear. The pain and the consequences, and fuck, he can hardly take it. His heart is bruised, bleeding at the fracture lines, trying desperately to put itself together in the aftermath of it. This was never supposed to end pretty.

Tao is, has been his ruin, and maybe there's mercy in this. Awful as it feels. But Sehun's left raw and aching. In too deep. He'd been in too fucking _deep_. Had given until he was practically empty.

And now anchorless, reckless, Sehun throws himself into his work. He's destructive, petty, angry, lashing out. He becomes a more effective hunter.

Distractions. These missions, these wolves, they're all just busy work to keep the feelings at bay. Kikwang, Kiwang's actions almost mercifully, wonderfully bold. Stealing pets now, writing letters again, talking about the value of family, how easy, easy, easy it is to hurt somebody, just how small and vulnerable their nuclear families are. Visiting the sins of parents upon their children unless they relent, pull back their forces, nix new bills, new curfews, new _oppressions_ , stop destroying other packs for his sake.

But the Department, Sehun's group, they break up another pack instead. Not rural this time. Self-aware enough to know they've been caught, that they'll be leniency if they surrender other names. There's a chain reaction of loss, and Sehun only feels the most muted distress, collects stars on his profile.

Hakyeon comments on it. Wonshik, too. Chanyeol jokes about the romantic dead weight that he must have dropped to pull this off.

And Sehun forgets, almost. It's easy enough to sever that part of his feelings, compartmentalize it away, for the awful, awful moments when he hurts at night.

 _Come back_ , Tao beckons in Sehun's dreams. _I want you. Oh Sehun, I want you still.You mattered. You matter._

Even though he hadn't. Hadn't anymore.

Sehun keeps hoping that he'll be so so exhausted, so occupied that the phantom feel of Tao's fingers on his cock, around his neck, they'll stop haunting him.

Maybe. Hopefully. Please. Please. Please.

A

Chanshik asks about him. Tactless, a child, he had gotten used to the smell of him on Uncle Taozi's clothes, asks when he'll visit again. He'd promised that Chanhik would get big, too, had talked about climbing trees, and can Uncle Taozi take him climbing until his friend comes back again.

And it's only been a week, but it's almost like opening the wound.

Tao breaks a little part of himself in breaking that hunter. Curls away, guards, hides, and that hurts almost worst than the betrayal. Hurts almost worse than the parts of Tao he'd been missing in those moments on those nights of baiting, those nights of hurting.

Joonmyun's heart aches with what he won't allow himself to call regret.

♂

He's forgetting. Forgotten almost. Almost, almost, almost. Distracted, driven, no longer distraught.

But Kikwang—no longer merciful, no longer a pleasant, harmless enough public enemy—he brings the crudest, cruelest, most awful, most violent sort of distraction.

She was 23, the new anchor starts. The daughter of a politician. This wolf, he'd torn her apart.

And it's an awful collision of Sehun's past with his present, an awful reminder.

"Huang Zitao," a wolf says three days later, his voice heavy, eyes broken, body trembling near Minseon's side. "Huang Zitao, of Two Moons. I followed her scent. I saw the clothes."

There are always casualties in the upsweep of panic.

And really, that's grounds enough.

And really, there's nothing Sehun can hope to do.

Ω

It's his worst fear actualized.

Hell. Hell.

And he can't help the distressed call he sends out. Can't help the pain, the fear, the please no. The save me please Joonmyun I need you. Please. Please. Please.

It's instinctive, desperate, helpless as the silver cuffs snap around his trembling wrists.

A

Joonmyun had let out the loudest cry when they'd taken him, protesting hard against Yixing.

The sharp, awful, awful spike of fear. He'd been fucking _terrified_ , his mate he’d been—

And Joonmyun was out. Fucking privileging this dream over the reality of his—

He'd promised him. He'd fucking _promised_ him that this would never come to pass. That Tao would never have to fear for this. Never be caged again. Not ever have cause to experience the horror stories of his youth. He'd promised him that first night, that night that he'd claimed him, he'd promised him to keep him safe. To protect him from this.

And he'd failed him. He'd hurt him.

Joonmyun shifts and tears his way through the forest, uproots trees, claws at boulders, destroys until his paws are bloody and Yixing is pulling him away. Reminding him that there are others. That he has a pack. The children, the children, Joonmyun.

There's the further danger that Tao—unmated, unclaimed, unfettered—for Joonmyun's awful fucking sake, that he'll be deported. Lost forever. Subject to those horrors, that torture, that pain.

♂

Tao is kept in the isolation chambers. 2 blocks down, in the basement of an old warehouse.

The Department, their entire society operates on the assumption that hunters, general citizens would never free those _monsters_. Relative ease of access, it allows also for torture, revenge. Commonplace, Sehun has been led to believe.

Cells, they're guarded only insofar as there's a badge scan at the front, a key number to unlock each cell. It's subject to the most piecemeal surveillance, guards there only on the daily moves to the yard for exercise.

The cells themselves, they're barred, charmed, open enough for hunters, for victims, for the occasional rare werewolf visitor to see, touch. _Ache_.

Sehun's fingers are shaking badly. It takes three attempts, one scratch to his shiny, shiny badge for Sehun to stumble inside that night.

He clambers into the room, groping carelessly through the cell bars for him. Tao, he's reaching back for him. His skin is distressingly cold to the touch.

"I didn't," he says sluggishly. Insistent, firm nonetheless. The silver, the charmed interior.

"I know."

"I wouldn’t—Sehun, I _wouldn't_."

"I _know_. You're better than this, softer, kinder than this."

It's only been 4 hours, but he looks frail already. Haggard. Beneath those harsh, harsh lights.

And Tao is nuzzling into his touch. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Sehun is reassuring, cradling his jawline. "It's okay. You're okay. You're gonna be okay."

But Tao is shaking his head, humming in dissent, and it vibrates against Sehun's trembling palm.

"Talk to Joonmyun," he's saying, and no, Sehun shakes his head. Tearing up, shifting to cradle his cheek, thumb at his eyebrow.

"Don't bring him up," Sehun insists. "He doesn't matter. All that matters is you and me right now, remember? I'm gonna get you out. I promise. I'm gonna get you out. Don't worry."

"Sehun, I need you to—I need Suho. My Joonmyun."

"I know," he starts. "I know you need another wolf" It's maddening in these moments, the wolf terrified, clambering for reprieve. It needs to be held, placated, needs the comfort, the warmth of another like himself. But but— "Don't worry, we'll get you out. You'll be fine. I'll find a way to get you out.

"I don't need another wolf, Sehun. I need my _mate_. He's my mate, Sehun. I need you to talk to him. My Suho, my Joonmyun, my Alpha."

And Sehun's breath catches, suddenly, painfully in his throat. "What," he somehow manages.

"Suho, Joonmyun, he's my—"

"He's your mate," Sehun says softly, and the words are so heavy on his tongue. Bitter, too. And soft and shy and shaky. "He's your _mate_."

And that's why he'd been so insistent, why he'd been so possessive, so hurt. He loved Tao. Tao was his to love, and Sehun, he'd just been—

_Tell me this is a joke. Tell me that you weren’t—_

"Are you really so surprised?" Tao breathes. "Were you really so dense? We—we communicated in front of you."

"You _lied_ to me," Sehun hisses, and he can't help it, the raw emotion, the desperate want still in his voice. The betrayal, the suddenly misplaced betrayal. “You—this whole time. He's your fucking _Alpha_. He asked me to stop, Tao, and I laughed in his face. I mocked him for being to weak to keep you, your fucking _mate_."

"I'm sorry," he's saying, the words wet and imploring against Sehun's wrist. Soft.

Sehun's still cradling him, can't bring himself to stop touching Tao, can't bear the thought of it, even though it burns now. The touch. The shame. The betrayal. This fresh wound, it's more painful than the last because Sehun was in the wrong. Tao made him in the wrong. Made him something ugly for his own sake.

But he still—fuck, it's still so potent, this want.

"After me" he presses. "After me, you went back to him. Smelling of me, you went to— _fuck_ , Tao?"

Tao's nod is soft, too, the most subtle dip. "I'm sorry," he repeats.

"Why? Why did you let me believe—"

You _know_ why. I had to, Sehun. I fucking had to, but I'm sorry. I know I hurt you, and I'm sorry."

"You used me," he accuses in a whisper, still touching, still, still caressing, still, still needing. His voice is brittle. Just about to crack, and he swallows hard, looks away before continuing, repeating, impressing the point. "You just used me."

"I'm sorry, Sehun. I'm really, really sorry."

"I _loved_ you, Tao," he breathes, the silver smarting against his own skin as he presses closer. Tao blinks up at him, blinks back tears. Too. Because Sehun's eyes are also brimming with them, voice thick with them, too. "I love you, or I was starting to. And you—you already loved somebody else. You betrayed me."

"I'm sorry." So sincere, but still, still not enough.

Sehun's chest is so tight, he can barely breathe. "I _know_."

"Please, tell my mate. Please tell him."

Sehun shakes his head. Suddenly petulantly, irrationally cruel.

" _No_."

 

And in Sehun's nightmares, fantasies, dreams that night, Tao stretches out long and lean and luxurious, body arched in a delicate bow as Joonmyun’s—his Chosen's, his One's, his Mate’s, his fucking _Love’s_ —hands skate down Tao's sides, grip hard at his waist to drag him closer. Tilt him just _right_ , for Joonmyun’s taking. Only ever for Joonmyun’s taking. And Tao's legs fall open easily, in blatant invitation, familiar, familiar need.

A

A mess, he's a fucking mess.

Weak, hyperemotional, starved, ripping at the seams, shifting erratically between human and wolf, every cell screaming for reprieve.

Not fit to be _anything_. Much less Alpha.

He relinquishes the title easily enough, eagerly enough, quivers in an angry, desperate mess of trembling limbs, begging all the while begging.

He needs. He fucking _needs_.

More. The Alpha always needs more. He's always needed Tao more than Tao's ever needed him. And his body is being torn open, put back together, from the very vastness of his need.

Desolation, despair, damnation, he’s helpless to the depths of his urgency, the utter fathoms of his need.

♂

"He's falling apart already," Taekwoon notes after two days. "Losing hair, losing weight, getting pale, refusing to talk."

"He shouldn't be," Minseon responds, noncomittal, disapassionate. "Shouldn't be falling apart like this unless he's lied about a mate. Unless there's some preexisting condition."

Joonmyun. He'd lied about Joonmyun.

To everyone, not just him.

But he still—

"He'll die within the next couple of weeks if that's the case." Taekwoon purses his lips. "Before the trial is underway."

And _no_.

 

He's had arguments with him in his head. Tearful and angry, revolving almost exclusively on how Sehun had almost almost loved him, how that would have been worth something his love, his feelings, him—how Tao hadn't been an indulgence for him, hadn't been for a long time, how deep Tao's betrayal had cut. And in these scenarios, these play arguments, Tao admits to his mistakes, tells him he loves him, too. Kisses and love him back, even though there's no happy ending in this. No mutually beneficial outcome fro them both.

They've been playing on repeat, an awful loop of self-flagellation, self-indulgence, but the fight leaves Sehun's shoulders, emptied out as he drinks in the sight of frail, frail Tao.

The hurt, it's still there, but it's superseded by the concern, by the affection.

"Hurts," Tao breathes, the words weak, wet, and Sehun squeezes his hands, through the bars. "Hurts without him."

"Oh, Tao."

He’s so much worse now, worse for wear.

Sehun reaches out for him desperately, runs fingers through his scalp, scrapes over the nape of his neck, and Tao sighs into the caress, arches into it, too.

And maybe it's Sehun's turn to apologize, too.

"I'm sorry," Sehun starts. And Tao doesn't push him to clarify, continue, instead nuzzles into Sehun's palm like a cat. Desperate for touch, and this is the best he can hope to do. "Sorry for leaving you. For saying I loved you and then leaving you like this."

Tao shakes his head, presses more. "I'm sorry, too. For being unworthy of your love. For letting you fall in love and not stopping it. I'm sorry for lying about Joonmyun. I'm sorry that that hurt you."

"How that work?” Sehun presses. Because he wants to hurt. Wants to bleed for this, too. Remind himself before he allows himself to love—almost love—Tao again.

"Between Joonmyun and me?"

Sehun nods, and Tao drags Sehun's palm to his throat. He can feel his breath, his words.

"It's not like it is with humans," Tao says slowly. "He's mine. He smells, tastes, feels like home. I feel his pain, his happiness, his anger, his want, his...pleasure, too. It's bone-deep. Soul-deep. That's a soulbond."

 _And presumably everything else—Sehun, Sehun, Sehun—is inconsequential_.

Tao gestures as he speaks. The movements are unsure, Sehun knows, Sehun has learned the nuances, the subtleties. But even then they're still too liquid, beautiful to be fully human. To be Sehun's. He doesn't know why he ever thought—

"Is this why you're hurting?"

And Tao nods, his laugh hollow. "It's awful, but I don't know how to love any other way. I only know this big, big thing. Want, lust, infatuation," _Sehun, Sehun and what they had_ , "that's all fleeting. But this, it _hurts_."

Sehun's stomach, heart clench, and he avoids Tao's eyes, then. Bites his lip. Because even though, even though he wants to understand, it's still so raw to the touch. "You have everything with him. Why would you—with me?"

"I wanted to," Tao insists. "And who if not you?"

And Tao knows any number of people— _wolves_ , he amends, face souring when Sehun raises an eyebrow—willing to participate in their relationship. But it's still not—not enough.

"Then why?" Sehun asks, with his fingers still tracing over the firm expanse of Tao's chest, and Tao captures his wrist, holding him there, only harder. He shifts beside him, face to face, and in the soft twilight, Tao regards him. His eyes are too open then, wide and bright and so real, so painfully human. "You smelled like mine, too," he says. "Mine in a different way."

"After the fact," Sehun hedges. "Smelled like yours after the fact. When it couldn't ever count for anything."

"That night, that of the Moon Rites, and the other with the medallion, I lied when I said they meant nothing to me. You meant something, and I'm sorry. But I didn't mean to hurt you. I did at first but by the end. I could feel it you know that night with the medallion. Joonmyun tried to warn me in his own way. But I was so greedy for you, so _proud_. And I felt it then. I did. And I felt back."

"But where does that leave us?"

Tao lifts his palms in resignation.

And he can feel the steady drum of Tao's heart beneath his palm. Firm and grounding as Tao licks his lips, hesitates.

"At the start…it was kind of a way to be angry and hurt?" Tao sighs, looks away. "I don't think you understand…you know, how ugly it feels to…" Tao's fingers dance up the length of Sehun's spine. "And it's almost a way to validate myself. There's a thrill in it, you know."

And Sehun doesn't know. Isn't very good at one-night stands. Tends to think with his heart, think it's connected to his cock—the source of all this pain—but he nods nonetheless. Nods for him to continue

"And I'm ugly and wrong and not _human_ , but look at how you long for me. And look at how easy you make it. You people, you're remarkably easy to seduce. Men, women, so eager to understand yourself as special, as unique, the great exception, when we just want to be the same, normal, _human_."

Sehun smarts at that, starts to curl away, and Tao thumbs at his wrist. A small affection, small distraction. Distressingly effective.

"That's part of it. A big, big part. But then it's also, you feel good, Sehun. You're softer, too. Cooler, delicate, so so responsive."

His hand slides further, curls, cups, cradles just _so_. As if to prove a point. "I think I loved you, too. I think I love you, too."

And really, how is that supposed to make Sehun feel?

Like he's in his place. Like he was a one-night stand that simply got out of hand.

"Please tell my mate," he whispers after a beat. "He won't hurt you. He might want to, but he won't hurt you. He needs you right now. He needs you to hold him. Tell him you need him. tell him that he’s—"

And through the bars, Tao holds his hands. Reaches to drag him forward, urging until their faces are touching through the cold metallic bars. He nuzzles into Sehun's neck, movements, weak, stilted, clumsy.

"He won’t want it. But he'll need it. Tell him his Taozi loves him. Tell him his Taozi needs him just as much."

"Okay."

 

And Sehun races mindlessly, pathetically, towards Two Moon's pack house.

 

Unwanted, unwelcome, uninvited.

Unprepared, distressingly unprepared for the sight that greets him as he stumbles past the door.

Joonmyun, he is fucking _trembling_ , a naked, sweaty tangle of quivering limbs on his floor mat, his eyes wild, desperate, unfocused.

He's pathetic. It's awful.

"I need him," he slurs, voice shaky and strained. "I fucking _need_. Give him to me. I need him. Please. Please. _Please_."

"I know—" Sehun tries to soothe, reaching out for him, but Joonmyun snaps. His eyes coming in to focus only to snarl at him, burn at him.

"No, you fucking _don't_. You fucked him half a dozen times. You—you kissed him. You maybe, maybe even care for him. But it wasn't. What you had, it's a fucking shadow, Sehun. He's a _part_ of me." His hatred animates him briefly, grounds him, but even then it breaks. And Joonmyun devolves into another chant of "I fucking _need_ him. Give him to me. I need him. Please. Please. Please."

Sehun pins him down, struggling from the effort, clumsily dragging his neck, his chin against Joonmyun's throat, panting about how he's needed. Just as much, just as _much_. About how much he matters. How important he is.

And Joonmyun stops thrashing, sobbing, recovering finally, enough to sit up, shove Sehun off of him, drag a sheet over his lap. Better, but there's hatred there. Still anger.

"Stop, little Red Riding Hood," Joonmyun drawls, slurs. His fingers—small, but broad—are firm against his chest. Shaking as they are. "Retreat."

"No," Sehun insists.

"Why are you here?" His tone is icy. His anger is unrestrained now. Unhidden.

But Sehun, he's not going to attack a broken man, wolf. Not when he's so broken, he's lashing out in his hurt, antagonizing his only hope.

"He asked me to."

"You're so _pathetic_ , disgusting, the perfect plaything," Joonmyun bites out. Relishing it, Sehun knows. Still not biting, still not hurting—at least not physically—but he's tearing at Sehun, nonetheless, piece by bloody piece, pressing down where it most hurts. "Still so eager to be used. Still so desperate for him even after he—"

"He _asked_ me."

"We've been using this whole time," Joonmyun continues. "Both of us. And you make yourself so easy for it. You have to recognize that."

But no, Sehun doesn't. And there's something in Joonmyun's eyes, beneath the conviction. The hatred. Something pitiful in its utter humanity, vulnerability. Something that Sehun recognizes as fear, jealousy. And his own heart is catching on the jagged edges of his broken hope. He's bleeding for it, bleeding out right there in front of Joonmyun. In his own way.

"You still want," Joonmyun says, laughs. And it's sharp, bitter, his anger, his tone. "You're humiliated, but you still _want_. He doesn't love you. Doesn't care about you. He wanted to hurt you. Just like I want to hurt you. He _hates_ you just as much as I do. He fucked you to pass the time. Fucked you to get information out of you. You were a means to an end. Pathetic little hunter."

But something—something snaps.

And no, Joonmyun has taken it for granted that Sehun can be cruel, too. Can make Joonmyun hurt, too. More. Even more. And it's more comfortable, more natural than pity, than concern.

"And _you_ let it happen,” Sehun says back. Brusque. Jagged. "Let him fuck me every week. Used him like a fucking pawn, auctioned him off for your own dreams."

Joonmyun's fingers clench into fists near his thighs. "Shut up," he bites back. "You don't know anything about me. Don't know anything about us. You were a fucking stepping stone. All for the plans," he hisses.

"Because you wanted to fuck me," Sehun tries, emboldened by the anger, hurt, uncertainty glimmering in Joonmyun's dark, dark eyes. "That, that badly." Something clicks in Joonmyun's jaw. "Did you get off on it," Sehun bites back. "Fucking the smell of my come out of his body? Wondering if he'd made the same sounds for me? How much did it fucking _burn_ , knowing he came to _me_ —to that pathetic little hunter—on the Moon Rites, when he could have been with you? Should have been with you? How much did it _burn_ , him picking me over you, over and over again even after you'd asked him to stop? Just how much _Alpha_?" Sehun is sure to pucker his mouth on the last word, raise his eyebrow in icy challenge, baiting, breaking.

Joonmyun inhales sharply, squaring his shoulders, blinking rapidly as if momentarily dazed, and his next laugh is bitter, disbelieving. "You're aroused," he notes. " _Fuck_ , you're turned on. All sticky-sweet with it. _Fuck_."

Sehun pushes past the shame, the fear. "Fuck _you_."

“I could destroy you,” he says. “I could swallow you whole. Break you apart. I made sure somebody that you care about betrayed you, and after all this,” his voice is hard, his eyes even harder. “You still want me to fuck you? You're still that desperate for it. _Fuck_.”

“You want me, too,” Sehun responds. He's groping blindly, speaking with false bravado, but he's hit _something_ , uncovered _some_ truth, if Joonmyun's sudden tension is any indication. "I can smell it on you, too. You’re just as guilty. You hate me, and yet you still want to fuck me. Wanted me, then, too."

"I want to tear you apart. I want to rip you open. I want to leave you a bruised, broken, claimed thing? Is that what you want to hear?" Joonmyun laughs. And yes, distressingly, Sehun's body is responding to that, too. Wanting that, too. "Keep you pinned like a butterfly. Pretty, ruined, Little Red."

Sehun shudders, swallows a whimper, and Joonmyun curses softly.

"I don't know how Tao managed," Joonmyun groans. "It's so _potent_. I want to pin you down. I want to break you open."

Another sound. This one louder, no less shameful.

"But have you ever been fucked by somebody that hates you, Sehun? Have you ever been fucked by somebody that actually wants to hurt you? Somebody that is channeling their aggression into something violent and awful and dangerous. The wolf, that's what he wants. Wants to hurt you. Wants to eat you alive. No figuratives or romance about it. I would kill you, Oh Sehun."

And yes, there's the rasp of desire there, attraction, though confused, but too violent, too much. Sehun knows to be scared. Knows this isn't an indulgence he can allow himself. There isn't a mutually beneficial end in this either. No use in teasing at this angle, provoking this monster.

Joonmyun, he'd promised. And Tao maybe should have made Sehun promise, too.

"Tao, he doesn't hate me," Sehun starts after a long, long beat, reroutes. "You weren't there, but I know you know he doesn't. I know you know probably, too, that he cried on me tonight. Not just for your sake, but for mine, too. He doesn't hate me."

"He doesn't love you either. Doesn't care like you care. And in spite of all of this, knowing this was a lie, knowing about me, about how you can _never_ mean enough to him, you still—still love him."

"I do. I really, really do. That's why I'm here. He asked me, and I can't say no."

The fight leaves Joonmyun's small shoulders, the fire leaves his eyes. The menace in his voice fades, too. And he’s just a small, small man, desperately in love with Tao, too. Hopeless for it, too. "That's why we're both here."

It's anti-climatic, weak, as far as truces are concerned. But Joonmyun motions for him to sit, pulls the sheet higher.

Social niceties, Sehun figures, werewolf custom, though Joonmyun doesn't make any further indications at wanting to speak. Wanting to engage. Wanting to do anything but sit near each other. One clothed, one naked, both aching, both desperate.

Sehun, at the foot of the mat where Tao and Joonmyun have spent countless, countless nights, notes the way that Joonmyun's throat bobs, eyelashes fluttering as Sehun shifts a little uncomfortably.

And oh, yes, the reason why Tao had begged him to come.

Sehun rises shakily, moves a little clumsily, glides forward. And Joonmyun protests weakly, but he's helpless to it, inhaling deeply, fucking groaning again. Licking, too. Mouthing across the sensitive expanse of trembling skin, his fingers bruising, holding him steady.

"Too faint," he rasps out. Pulling away just far enough to rest his head against Sehun's heaving chest. "It's not enough."

Sehun is still reeling from the intimacy of it, fingers moving a little clumsily to stroke through Joonmyun's hair, shifting to drag against his collarbone, thumbing at the hollow of his throat.

"It's fucking stupid," he hisses. "Making it like this. Having me helpless like this."

His hands tremble at Sehun's side. And Sehun can hear the tears in his voice.

"I don't want to hate you," Sehun starts, adding still to the foundation of this shaky trust. "For his sake, for the sake of this. Please don't hate me either."

"I _can't_. Even this—" Joonmyun confesses, words muffled against his chest. "Even this, it's not enough for me to stop."

Joonmyun is the one that's clinging, but Sehun feels most vulnerable now. Pathetic. Desperate for approval.

"But why?" he presses, thumbing more forcefully now, cradling now, and Joonmyun melts into the touch.

"You've caused too much hurt for me to ever trust your kind. Ever trust your motives. And even when he cooperate, even when we try to live by your rules, even then…" Joonmyun's drags his lips as he speaks, deliberates. "Jinyoung didn't live in the woods. They were assimilationist. They'd played everything by the book. But your father, he leaked those names in the aftermath. He—he _murdered_ them.

Sehun's breath catches in his throat, a stuttered gasp dying there. And he doesn't know how to react, doesn't know what to say, shakes his head instead, lets his arms fall limp around Joonmyun's shoulders.

"It was your _father_ , Sehun. Your father. Your blood. That paid for you to go to school. He feed you with their blood money."

"But that was—" Sehun protests weakly. "That's was my _father_. Not me. Not my fault. Not my choice. I didn't know."

"But this is your fucking _job_ ," Joonmyun counters, voice still reedy, but firm, hard with conviction. "It _is_ your fucking choice, Sehun. You fucking choose every single day you step into that building. Some of the others, maybe, they can argue that they don't understand. Maybe it's not _active_ for them." There's a hollowed out bitterness there, tired, exhausted, empty from it. "But this is your livelihood. They took my Tao—they fucking stole him, and you're gonna get paid for that. For taking him away from me. For putting him in that cage. He's going to die. Your citizens, your awful fucking humans, they'll pay for it, too."

Something like uncertainty, like self-loathing, something potent and ugly twists low in his gut. “I’m sorry,” he starts to say. Even though it doesn't seem strong enough. Nothing seems—

“Spare me your fucking guilt,” Joonmyun hisses, voice thick with emotion. "They're gonna kill him, and you're too blame. And you'll be paid for it."

Joonmyun's still holding, paradoxically, still clinging tight.

"I want to get him out," Sehun finally says.

"And how are you going to guarantee that?" Joonmyun, he's trembling again, devolving again. "I've called my contact, but it's too high-profile. It's too risky. And just how can you—how can you a fucking green hunter, how can you—?"

"I promised him I would find a way."

"Keep it. Fucking keep this promise."

"I will. I will."

"And give him this…for me," Joonmyun relents, sliding his fingers over the taut skin of Sehun's throat, pinching the flesh hard between his fingers. And Sehun bites back a gasp, maybe a moan.

 

And Sehun resolves to try.

 

The next night, it's a Full Moon, and Sehun sneaks into Jaehwan's office, searching for something to soothe, something to hold Tao through. And Jaehwan's eyes are guarded, heavy, disarming as he hears the request.

"Why?"

"It's cruel," Sehun says. Means. Eyes open in response, voice pitched earnest. "I tailed him for months. I know him. Nobody—no thing—deserves to waste away like that. It's cruel."

Jaehwan regards him for a long, long beat, retreats in the confines of his office. Jaehwan has an air of theatricality in all that he does, was created for this type of work almost. He keeps his potions and concoctions in mason jars, refuses to clean cobwebs as they contribute to the general _ambience_ , has shown up at times in full wizard regalia.

It's what Sehun has come to expect. But what he gets is a small purple bottle, encasing a handful of small purple capsules. "It's for suppressing during questioning," he offers with a shrug. "I can't promise anything, but it might soothe him." Jaehwan hesitates. "We're not exactly in the business of comforting them, you know. Treating them, I mean, but it's the best I can do."

Sehun nods in gratitude, squeezes the bottle tight, and Jaehwan, never ever so reticent, so hesitant, he pauses again.

"I won't tell them that you took it. I won't tell them you asked."

 

"I doubt they'll work," Tao laughs, shakes when presented with them, fingers lingering against Sehun's wrist longer than strictly necessary. Cradling, caressing, too. "But I don't need them. The wolf, he trusts you. Likes you. You took care of me that night, that night with the medallion. Took care of him, too. All of our worries, all of our violence, it comes from that."

"But I think you should still take something," Sehun protests, motioning with his free hand. Doesn't the Full Moon, doesn't that make you want to shift? Doesn't that exacerbate the symptoms? Does that make you want to shift…now that you're not having sex regularly?" His tone is hesitant, delicate.

"Oh, so ignorant," Tao chides softly. "So, so clueless. Don't they have information about this in all those books they've written, all those books they've made you read."

"They lie," Sehun tries, and Tao's smile is weak. No less charming.

"We gotta have our secrets. Can't give it all up so easily, you know."

"Not you? Why did you tell me?"

"I trust you, hunter. Huntsman. I trust you, Sehunnie."

And it's too earnest, too raw, too good at making Sehun think that maybe Tao really did, almost did—

"Joonmyun would say you shouldn't," Sehun responds.

And Tao concedes the point with a nod. "Yes, he wants what's best for me. And he's what's best for me. Much better than you, you know."

Tao lessens the barb with a touch, his fingers warm, fitting so easily through Sehun's. Weak. Sehun's smile is weak, too.

"But you'll suffice," he jokes. "Tide me over until the real thing comes along."

"Your mate," Sehun breathes, touching back, skating his grip up Tao's forearm, his thumb rubbing against the warm, familiar skin as he speaks. "He hates me."

Tao nods again, agrees with a soft, disappointed resignation. "But he loves me. And if I say I want—"

"He'll _tolerate_ me."

"What more do you want, Sehun?"

 _Want me back, want me back_.

"You're right," he says, and Tao's smile, his eyes are painfully fond.

His hand closes over Sehun's own, guides him up until Sehun is touching Tao's neck, knuckles dragging against his throat. Sehun takes direction, pinches the skin, and Tao lets out a soft, soft moan, eyelashes fluttering heavily.

"Harder," he breathes.

And his moan, it's louder now, weak still.

"I need him," he confesses softly. Needlessly. "I need him." His eyes glaze over as he speaks, and Sehun pinches again, drags his nails against the pucker of a scar at Tao's neck, forcing him into focus.

"Tell me, Tao. Talk to me about him." Sehun presses his face against the bars. "Were you from the same pack when you…mated? What made you chose him?"

"I didn't _choose_ ," Tao groans. "He was _given_ to me. I know you know that."

"But what about people that don't want mates? What about people that don’t—?"

"Wolves," Tao corrects with a smile. "Wolves that don't want a mates." Sehun nods. "The universe doesn't make mistakes when picking your forever. Or your not at all. It's just that simple. It's just that beautiful."

Tao's love for Joonmyun, it's cosmic. Pre-ordained. Part of some fixed, perfect plan.

Something hot and hard lodges itself in Sehun's throat, and he has to swallow several times before speaking again. "Were you relieved when you found out Joonmyun was a man?"

Tao laughs at that, loud and abrasive. Weak, still, but fuller than any of the sounds he's been releasing all night.

"I mean, I know you’re—but what if you hadn't been."

"But I am. Most of us, we are with—an be with both. And the universe doesn't make mistakes, Sehun. It really doesn't. He belonged to me. He smells like mine. He feels like mine. He _is_ mine. And I his. And I have never ever been cause to doubt that."

 _Not even me_.

Sehun accepts the kiss, stilted and awful that Tao drops to his cheek, his nose, his mouth.

Sehun returns the gesture that night—tearfully, groaning into the forceful, bruising desperation of Joonmyun's wild-eyed need. "I don't want you here," he declares still. But need, pure undadultered need, it supercedes want. And Joonmyun insists even as he buries his face in Sehun's neck, forces Sehun's head back to deepen the angle.

And he's taking again, licking his way inside.

A

He tastes mostly Sehun, too too too much Sehun, but the traces of Tao, they're addictive. The traces of Tao, they’re enough.

Sehun, his scent, his taste, too, it’s merely the stainache of love.

♂

Sehun, he calls in his vacation days. Tunes out the promise of repeats. A hit list, Kikwang is bragging.

He is consumed, instead, entirely in this. In Joonmyun and Tao. And Sehun, he returns many, many affections, caresses, kisses over the days.

An intermediary. Sehun, he has no illusions about this. Accepts the fact that he's their conduit, heart heavy with the vastness of their love. It's thick, lingering on his skin long, long after encounters.

The days—nine—pass with the heartbreaking gravity of despair, every second so heavy, awful but treasured, nonetheless. This is all they have.

It's a slow, slow breakdown, the most muted deterioration.

Trying, this trial.

Tao sobs brokenly into the crook of his neck the fourth night, and Suho licks there afterwards, inhaling and taking and taking and taking.

Sehun giving and giving and giving.

Loving by proxy.

 

Tao gives so much in his effort to pass the time. Divulges much. (And at night, he touches him desperately, weakly. At night touches Sehun dizzy and enamored)

And Sehun keeps coming back to this, grounding himself and cutting himself with this. It's awful, but necessary this indulgence. A sort of self-flagellation in finding out the depths of their love, the fathoms of their longing. For each other. He's reminding himself there's no place for him here. Even as he loses himself in the headiness of their affection, their need.

"Was it love at first sight?" Sehun asks, and Tao shakes his head, face twisting in mild distaste.

"Nothing so _juvenile_."

"Explain," he presses, and Tao sighs loudly, fondly in exasperation. In his eyes there's a softness that's maybe almost enough for Sehun's at this point.

"Humans don't love the same way, I've read. Even romance novels, when they try to capture it, they get it wrong. It's romantic, too, but it's just he _belongs_ to me. Together we create this unit, this beautiful whole, and the feelings aren't there that first night, but it's just…it's just all this potential, this potential love, this known forever, and the _scent_ of something that will bring you endless happiness."

And because it hurts in a good way, almost. Reminds in a good way. "Tell me about that night. The Moon Rites."

"He _held_ me," Tao whispers. "He's cheesy, you know. Romantic. Prone to big gestures. That first night, he kept checking if i was okay, kept telling me I was so beautiful, smelled so _good_."

Like licorice, Sehun's mind, memory supply. Sticky sweet, thick in your throat, on your tongue.

"And when he knotted me, he was so _gentle_. He kissed my whole face, cradled it, too, held my hand and asked me to squeeze if it hurt too much, he was sorry. He was so, so sorry. If it was too much...It wasn't. Or it _was_ , but in the most perfect fucking way. Knotting it's…" Tao's eyed turn wistful then apologetic. "And he kissed away my shivers. I didn't speak Korean then, not really, but he kept using the mind bond to tell me he had _dreamed_ of me, his mate, his forever. That I was better than he ever could have hoped for. He smelled like mine. He was always meant to be mine."

He's tasted it. Known it. And Sehun is too breathless to do anything but motion for Tao to continue. To remind him. How mated and in love and perfect for each other those are.

"He courted me afterwards, too. I had just— _just_ arrived. It was still hard for us to communicate then, but he kept me in his room, slept in the living room of his own pack house like a bad puppy for my sake. He would pick me flowers, make me breakfast, stand on his tiptoes to kiss my forehead, hold my hand. We learned how to coexist, learned how to care for each other beyond the body." Tao's voice sounds wetter, weaker. "He's become harder since then. The world has made him harder. But he's so easy to love. And the second time, the second time, weeks later, it was even better. Love made it better. Made him even more giving, and I…"

Tao reaches out for Sehun, their fingers linking, their foreheads grazing, their lips brushing.

Loving, Sehun thinks, maybe loving in a different, hollowed out kind of way.

A

Tao, he's been fading with time. A cold absence, the potent pang of loss, static white noise in that part of Joonmyun's conscience that Tao—his mate, his other half is —is supposed to occupy.

Sharp and hot, the memory of their first time, a fleeting flicker of want, of love, and Joonmyun is starved for it. Inundated with fierce, fervent, frenzied desire.

♂

And it's starved, pathetically needy, the way Suho gropes for him, the way he nuzzles into Sehun's neck, inhaling deeply. His shoulders shaking from the effort. He clings to him, desperate. Impossibly small, light in his arms. A shadow, fading, fading.

And it's on Sehun to ground him. Piece him together. "I appreciate you," he groans. "Maybe, maybe that's not enough.” And he stops to pet Sehun's hair back, cradle his cheek. "But I do. Fuck, I do so much for this. Thank you. Thank you."

And Joonmyun, pale, small, vulnerable Joonmyun, he drags his forehead against Sehun's collarbone, fucking trembling as he inhales. "Still too faint," he sobs. "I need him _more_.

He kisses him. _Him_ , Oh Sehun. It's chaste, but no less needy, lips catching on Sehun's, teeth knocking, fingers threading to urge him harder.

And _this is enough_ , he’s groaning into Sehun’s mouth. _This is enough for me, after all_.

Ω

_The air is chilly, heavy with the disembodied howls, the concrete weight of purpose. Their purpose, his destiny. His and this wolf's. They're both naked, had shifted only to tumble into each other after they'd caught the scent, fallen on the soft ground in a tangle of breathless laughter, cursory exploration._

_The scent of him is heady, perfect, rich and thick and heart-stutteringly exquisite. His, he'd already known. This alpha was fully his. His to claim. Be claimed by._

_And Tao is burning. He needs it._

_Right now. Right now._

_He's grazing slow, slow, painfully, frustratingly slow, appraising fingers down Tao’s body, watching him through purposeful, careful, careful eyes._

_His eyes are so beautiful, too. ( **Everything** about him is so beautiful). Even heavy-lidded and glazed over like that. Too heavy. Too affectionate. Too hot. Tao's throat bobs, skin heats, and he squirms, head lolling to the side as a pair of impossibly red lips trail down his jawline, his neck._

_He pauses there, presses a breathless question. Repeats it when Tao doesn't respond. His hands, they're still dragging. Over the trembling planes of his chest, his stomach, lingering on his hipbones. Clenching, unclenching._

_He's small, this wolf, an alpha, soft and beautiful and careful. Hesitating, still. Murmuring soft, meaningless words into his skin._

_There's a building tension in Tao's chest, skull, a pressure growing, growing until there's a distinct pop. A hazy, a vague half-formed thought. **His** thought. He wants to bite his throat. Wants to claim him._

_Tao gasps at the momentary intrusion, stutters out a shaky, shaky nod, tangles his fingers in the wolf's hair by way of response. In encouragement. And there's the graze of teeth along the tender tendons, testing, maybe teasing._

_The pressure it's back, less clumsy this time, more soothing. A name. Beautiful. Dreams. Want. Want. Want. Keep. Please. Please. Keep._

_The knowledge, the sentiment warms his skin, overflowing in his heart._

_"Tao," Tao manages, and then he—Joonmyun’s—biting down. Hard. The skin protesting, breaking. Tao shudders bodily, pitches sharply, and the hand at his waist, it's moving to his cock. Cupping, asking permission again. Soothing, Tao, thinks, he's trying to soothe. Misinterpreting._

_Tao arches into the touch, legs splaying open, nails scraping over the nape of his neck. Straining, concentrating, one singular purpose. "Good," he tries to communicate. "Good. So good."_

_And Joonmyun groans into his wet throat, strokes harder, faster._

_"Too," he says aloud this time, his own fingers skittering down, gripping in turn when his point isn't communicated. He’s hard, too. Swelling already near the base, pulsing in his grasp._

_And Joonmyun braces himself on one elbow, pulls away enough to watch him. His  
lips are more distressingly red, puckered in a pant, face pinching with exertion, eyes still brimming with awe, affection, hot and heavy with it, and Tao has to look away again. Can't bear it. Not this soon._

_Neck limp, rolling to the side, he catches sight of Lu Hua, a beautiful soft-cheeked, sharp-eyed girl. Joonmyun's hands around both their cocks, moaning, shuddering at every smooth, smooth stroke, he watches them, too. Caught up in this, too._

_All supple skin, eager movements, reverence, too. In the way that Lu Hua paints over her thighs, scrapes along her skin. Abandon in the way that the girl arches into it, small, nimble fingers twisting in Lu Hua's hair, urging her down. Tao bites back a loud, loud moan at the sight of Lu Hua's heel pressing down. And "Seulgi," she's praising in mindless, useless Mandarin. "Seulgi, tastes so **good**."_

_It adds an extra punch to the pleasure and arousal already pumping through Tao's veins._

_But Joonmyun, his palm is warm as it cups his cheek, drags his gaze back. Murmuring something again. Laughing, teasing this time. His eyes glittering with want, with amusement._

_He drags his thumb against the flared head of Tao's cock, provoking another moan. Joonmyun presses their mouths together. He laughs into this, too. Their very first kiss. His lips curling teasingly against his when Tao chases the movement with a low, low whine._

_**Eyes here. Eyes Me. Here. Me. Fuck you. Want you. Please** _

_"Tao," he says aloud, against Tao's trembling lips. And then he's kissing him. Hard, deep, claiming, tasting, tasting, tasting, and Tao is melting, falling headfirst into it. Consumed in it._

_There's a flutter of movement, pale skin in his periphery, the long, long column of a throat thrown back in pleasure, but there's finality in this. Completion in this._

_Joonmyun easing his way inside, burning him alive_.

♂

Sehun, he can't keep doing this. He fucking _can't_. Finds himself moving on autopilot towards Hakyeon's office.

Hakyeon's eyes, they're guarded, testing. Much like Jaehwan's. Only there are deeper consequences. "Huang Zitao," he repeats. Back to Sehun.

When did Sehun stop _caring_? When did this stop being everything to him?

"He didn't," Sehun manages. "He was with me that night. He was with me."

Hakyeon's eyebrows disappear into just beneath his bangs. "What are you trying to say?"

"I've been—" seeing, loving, needing "fucking him. He was with me. In that trial, I can testify to that. He was with me."

"Oh Sehun."

"He was with me. I need go get him out. He'll die. I've been trying to help him, but I know he'll die."

"I know," Hakyeon says. And Sehun feels his heart break, crack in half. All the hope leaves his chest through the fissure line.

"And they aren't going to give him a fair trial. Not when she was—they're gonna make an example of him. And he'll—he won't make it."

“I know,” he repeats.

"Then how can you—How can you _honestly_ , consciously allow him to die? Without cause? We’re supposed to be better than this."

Dangerous ground, outright insubordination, but _You humans, you've always been the crueler_. And Sehun can't keep _doing_ this.

Hakyeon regards him for a long, long long beat. Then pulls out a notepad. Writes a number. "That's his code, but you they'll know you did it. You can't come back. You'll lose your job, your home, your reputation. You'll be rogue."

Sehun blinks, fingers limp around the sheet. "Why?" he manages.

Hakyeon's smile is sad, sympathetic. Maybe even understanding.

"You're the one he called 'Little Red.'"

Sehun nods, flushes, bows. The paper crinkles loudly in his clammy grasp.

 

With purpose, with purpose, footfalls heavy, resounding against the rainy concrete. Homeward bound, because he needs to clear his apartment, needs to write out an apology, needs to—

His door, the door to his department-issued apartment, it's wide open.

The dread settles heavily, has him reaching defensively for the heft of a knife at his thigh. Stepping gingerly through the dark doors.

And Kikwang, he's shown his face countless times. His voice, his eyes, his menace have been transmitted across air waves, superimposed on television screens. Larger, larger than life. Public enemy #1. Murderer, alarmist, terrorist. Feared. A principle, a radicalized ideal, the Big Bad Wolf.

He's smaller than Sehun would expect. Tiny, tiny, but no less menacing, terrifying standing in the middle of Sehun's living room, knife gleaming in his palm.

Menacing, unexplained. "Kikwang," Sehun breathes, and Kikwang's answering smile is bright, sharp. He moves like water. Fast, so, so smooth. "Why are you—?"

Kikwang takes one step closer, causes Sehun to retreat. He blocks his path, his escape. "Oh Sehun." He punctuates each syllable with a flick of his small, small wrist. "I've come to collect you," he supplies softly. "Kill you."

And he's inundated with fear, with the instinctual, distinctly human urge to run. But he quells it, pushes it past it with resolve even as his skin breaks out in goosebumps, the hair at the back of his neck raising tellingly.

And fear this time, it isn't mixed with arousal, with pure want. It's cold in his veins, freezing his limbs, squeezing his chest.

"We're on the same side," Sehun insists pitchily, attempts to placate, raising his hands in submission. "I'm not—not a real hunter anymore."

"It doesn't matter," Kikwang counters. Another step, another retreat. "You're reaping what you've sown. Paying for your prior sins. You're the last one on my list, _Little Red_."

The others, Sehun realizes, he's been killing the others. He's been—

Sehun, he's gonna die. Die here like this. On the cusp of something great again, something heroic. A shame, shame, shame.

“Oh, it’ll be bad, werewolf fucktoy. Golden boy torn open and left to rot like a fucking _animal_."

And Sehun, he's ill-matched, he knows. Was spared so many times, but he still speaks with sudden false bravado. Tries at this instead. "I don't want to hurt you," he says. And Kikwang laughs. Pitchy, so loud, biting.

"Hurt me? You've forgotten," Kikwang decides icily. "How easy you are to kill. Fucking a werewolf, it's made you bold. Fucking careless. He's rubbed off on you, after all." There's bitterness there, too. "Fucked his flaws into you," he continues. And there's another layer to this yet.

"Why? You must have known they would come after his pack? Would hurt innocent wolves? Why?" Sehun presses. A blatant attempt at distracting him. Effective, if the way that Kikwang pauses to look at him in disdainful incredulity is any indication. “They're innocent," he adds after a beat. “The hunters aren’t, I know. But those wolves—"

Kikwang’s laugh is even louder, ringing. "It was a matter of convenience. Easy access. He was careless, easy to follow, did all the work for me. With his slow, slow seduction. Too slow, too accommodating, " he pauses. Anger still, but maybe also despair. "But they’re hardly innocent in this either. Suho, his group, they profit off this just as you do."

“But Suho—” _He sent his mate to fuck me into complacency, wants to weaken the very foundations of the Departments structure_ “He’s _fighting_ for you.”

Another laugh. Distracted, but not less bitter. “He’s not the savior he makes himself out to be. He has blood on his hands, too. And he can play pretend all he wants, but that will _never_ wash them clean. And I will _never_ forget how he _took_ him from me. Turned him in. For his own fucking gain."

Sehun jerks at that, and Kikwang’s eyes are heavy on his face, deliberating and then deciding.

“Change of plans, Little Red. We’re gonna visit the prison. Suho, he’ll also repay his debts."

“Tao,” Sehun protests, still trying to piece things together, but knowing still that the feral glean in Kikwang’s eyes, the startling conviction, the anger, in Tao’s general direction, knowing that he’ll be—

“Yes, yes, Tao. His precious, precious Tao. He’ll taste _real loss_.” And Kikwang’s small, small fingers are wrapping tight and bruising around Sehun's wrists. “You, too,” he decides, deriding. “Because you _love_ him."

And Sehun he’s shaking harder in protest, reaching for his knife, the metal biting into his skin, bleeding, screaming as it’s knocked away, swinging blindly, fruitlessly, his mind a distressed, desperate loop of _no, no, no, Tao, no, no, no, Tao, no, no, no, please no, Tao_.

Kikwang’s fingers tighten further, and his knee digs into Sehun’s calf, forcing him to match Kikwang’s height. His breath is hot against Sehun’s jaw, his chin. “No, no, no, Little Red,” he chides. "We’re gonna go to that prison. You’re gonna break him out. Then I’m gonna kill you both. So he can know, too. Can suffer and wither, too."

A knee this time to Kikwang’s groin, a rolling shoulder and an awkward twist to try and shake him off. Unsuccessful, reckless and frantic as they are. He lacks finesse, lacks the strength necessary. And Kikwang’s twisting him again, his hand tangling in his hair and tugging hard, hard enough for tears to brim in Sehun’s hair as he pants, struggles to get away.

They’re so much stronger, and Sehun knows he never really stood a chance.

Kikwang’s pressing even closer. His eyes are nearly black—pitch, pitch black—his pupils blooming to replace the warm gold of his irises as he snarls a commanding, “Stop, Little Red."

And Sehun is being dragged kicking still, protesting still, panicking and dreading still still still.

The walk is long, long enough, but it’s not enough time. Not enough time for Sehun to get free. Not enough for him to free Tao. Not enough for for for—

All too soon they’re there. Rain soaking Sehun's clothes, making his bones ache, and Tao— _ **no, fuck, fuck, no, please, Tao, no, no no**_.

He possesses foresight enough to do this.

“You killed them. Those hunters, that man’s daughter, you killed them all. Not Tao. Not Tao’s pack. You killed all those people."

“And now you, too. Now Tao, too."

 _No_.

Sehun wrenches himself free. Aims blindly, connects with skin, bone, Kikwang’s jaw. Receives a knock to the head in response. Hears a bonechilling snarl. Further, further, further away as everything goes cold, black.

 

There’s solidity, a familiar, beautiful touch on his cheek. Words, he can hear words, too. Soft, imploring tones, pitched high with worry. A plea. He needs to answer the plea.

Sehun blinks his eyes open. He’s covered in blood, trembling, holding Sehun's face, a question over and over again. His name, too.

“Tao,” Sehun manages, and Tao lets out a startled sob. Is pulling him even tighter, sticky with blood, kissing his face between grateful gasps of Sehun’s name. His cheeks, his eyebrows, his nose, the corner of his mouth. Warmth, affection, an anchor, Tao as his anchor, as the coldness seeps out of his limbs. Relief is warm in his veins.

And there are another set soothing of hands, one hand moving through his scalp, the other urging Tao back. And no, Sehun protests. “No, no, _no_."

Words. More words. Longer syllables. Heard through water. “Sehun,” again. “Are you okay?"

“No, no, no, Tao."

“Are you okay?” Louder now. Pressed to his earlobe. “Sehun, are you okay?”

“Yes,” he breathes.

And Tao’s hands hands are back, smoothing over his chest, his waist.

"He's gone," Joonmyun is saying. And there’s even more blood on him, speckled on his cheeks, around his mouth. “He's—dead. You’re safe."

 _Suho_. Guardian, protector, savior. Alpha.

“You’re going with us,” Tao supplies softly. “Can you stand?"

But he’s being dragged upwards before he can answer. Cradled like a child. Joonmyun, who is even sticker with blood&—Kikwang’s blood—he’s wrapping his arms around Sehun’s waist, beneath his knees. Sehun clings automatically, snuggles even closer. Desperate for the touch.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you. It’s okay. You’re safe."

Sehun, he believes.

 

It’s raining outside still. Harder now. The water cleansing, soothing against his skin, white noise as he’s set down.

They have to shift. Have to move fast. The alarm has been triggered. And even though, even though they’d probably heard Kikwang and his confession, they need to go _now_. Go _fast_.

“Can you hold on?” Joonmyun asks, touching still, rubbing at his bruised wrist. Grounding. “If Tao carries you on his back? Can you hold on?"

Sehun nods.

"Scared?” Tao asks, soft, unsure, and Sehun is fucking terrified. Reeling still. But he shakes his head.

Tao steps away, to the side. He screams when he changes. Weakened, Joonmyun supplies, holding Sehun steady. It hurts because he's been weakened. But he’s okay, Sehun. This is his natural state.

And there’s a sizzle as Tao's skin overheats, breaks, his muscles contracting then expanding. Sehun’s stomach turns, and he can hear the protest of bones, tissue, the way they tear with a sickening pop. He feels the bile rise in his throat, and his stomach drops to his knees. And Tao’s entire body splinters, is torn apart, put together again before Sehun’s tearing eyes.

But even then, even then, there is majesty in the way he bursts forth. Magnificence and beauty even in this.

He's strong, muscled, and his black fur is silky, soft. It glimmers in the pale moon, beneath the dewy kiss of rain. He's beautiful, too, Sehun realizes. Maybe even more beautiful like this.

He leans into the tentative touch Sehun graces on his head. Eyes golden, oversized, but still distinctly human, still distinctly Tao.

Joonmyun urges him further forward, and Tao’s muscles shift beneath Sehun’s arms, his legs as he straddles him, holds tight.

There’s a groan behind him. The awful sizzle and pop, and Joonmyun is a wolf, too. Large, so large.

They exchange a long, long look. And Sehun nuzzles into Tao’s fur, clings to it, as they start to run. And things go pleasantly black.

 

By the time he's come to again. There is a a room, a bed.

Hands again. Tao’s. Comforting.

"It's werewolf code," he says softly. His fingers are warm, wrinkly, wet, dragging tenderly along his scalp, his cheekbone. The fresh bruises are still raw, painful to the touch, but Tao, his careful, careful caress, it's a soothing balm. And Sehun was built too soft, too fragile, his heart aches from looking at him. His body thrums from it, too. Watching him, wanting him.

The door clicks open soon after. Another presence in the room.

“Joonmyun,” Tao breathes, and his voice wavers. And Sehun wonders how he missed it before. Tao says Joonmyun's name, Sehun thinks, the way some would say a prayer.

Mind no longer foggy, he can smell the sudden submission, sudden relief. Sticky sweet, sugary almost, like licorice. It hangs thick in the air, makes a potent rush of heat, of shame twist low in Sehun’s gut.

The hatred isn’t there any longer, replaced with gratitude, precarious affection, but even then it’s not enough. He's not enough.

Sehun watches them, his chest oddly tight. Tao is so quiet for Joonmyun, captivated by him. Not, not for Sehun. Not ever really ever for Sehun.

There's love there, and Sehun, Sehun doesn't belong here. Sehun was merely an almost. A means towards an end.

Tao has moved back, into Joonmyun’s gravitation pull. And Sehun is at a loss now. But Joonmyun is touching him now, warm, small fingers skating up his arm, squeezing at his shoulders.

And Sehun’s heart feels raw, wounded, but it still aches for more. It still _wants_. He can’t go home, he knows, but he also, he can’t—

“I heard you," Joonmyun says softly. “I heard you calling out for me. Just—the way I hear Tao." His hand is bolder now, paradoxically more delicate, cradling, caressing.

“What does that—"

“You're part of our pack, Sehunnie,” Joonmyun insists, authority beneath the tenderness. “Rogue hunter that you are.” Joonmyun pauses, eyebrows pinching, watching him for so long that Sehun’s cheek heat, and he has to break the gaze. Watch Joonmyun’s throat instead. Joonmyun licks his lips. “But I think you’re also…” His adam’s apple bobs again, and Sehun watches a mole there shift as it does. “I think you’re also…"

“You, too, right?” Tao interrupts. “Smell like…?"

“Mine,” Joonmyun says softly, his pink lips pucker in quiet thought. “You bonded that night. Bonded with me, too."

But doesn’t that—is Joonmyun trying to say—

“It doesn’t _have_ to mean anything,” Joonmyun murmurs softly, almost shyly. His smile is almost boyish, earnest and reassuring. And Sehun’s heart lurches in his chest. "If you live with us,” Joonmyun continues, “Sleep beside us, touch—just innocent touch, that’s enough…"

“More than enough,” Tao whispers in response. “Anything you choose is more than enough."

 

They have a television set. Cable. Monopolized in the morning by the children, bright, pastel colors, giant cartoon characters. At night by Jongdae, Lu Hua, Seunghwan, Dongwoo. Games, dramas, cooking shows. But Sehun catches snippets of the news in between. Kikwang found. Damning footage. Appealed decisions. A blow to the Department. One Oh Sehun gone.

Sehun, he stops watching after a while. Goes to the post office in the outskirts to mail letters. To Sanghyuk, to Kyungsoo, to Chanyeol, to Hakyeon. To Minseon, too, after a long, long pause.

Human that he is, Sehun fits in easily enough. Honorary omega, he’s on domestic duty. He watches the children with Tao now, goes to the grocery store, helps clean up after meals. He aches still with a confused sort of want, the pressure building and building in his chest.

He sleeps sandwiched between them at night, Tao’s hands around his chest, Joonmyun’s leg thrown over his waist. Wakes up to their warm, warm touches and looks.

They leave some nights, mornings, afternoons, come back rumpled, disheveled, smiling, smelling of each other, stained with each other.

Sehun reads his letters. Buys books, puzzles to pass the time. Tugs himself to completion in the shower, soft, bitten moans echoing off the steamed blue tiles.

 

And Sehun feels something—resolve, resistance—starting to crack. Fissure growing and growing and growing until he—

“Okay,” he says one night, three weeks in, the word so heavy in the shadows of Tao’s nighlight, Tao’s and Joonmyun’s limbs already so heavy around Sehun’s body. Already so entangled, already so ensnared. “I want to try…as three."

“Right now,” Joonmyun’s voice, touch, eyes are suddenly hesitant. There’s the whisper of fabric, sheets as he shifts back, looks up at where Sehun is pressed between them both.

“Yes,” Sehun breathes, not meeting his eyes. Joonmyun touches his chin, remedies that problem. And even in the lowlight, there’s too much there. Sehun clenches his eyes shut.

“How?” he presses. Then softer, thumbing at his lashline. “Sehun, open your eyes."

“Or just two?” Tao says behind him. His arms had retreated after Sehun’s confession, are trailing up his back now. Sehun shudders, blinks his eyes open. “Or just…do you want to watch Joonmyun and me?"

“Anything you want is enough," Joonmyun says. And Sehun reflects on how _anything you want_ has become the new _we’re the only two that matter_. How that makes him feel wanted, important, vulnerable for it, in a different, more heady kind of way. “How?"

“Or—or do you want to tomorrow? Think about it—"

“No, no, no,” Sehun insists, shaking his head. “Joonmyun. I want Joonmyun…here” He motions to his bottom half. “Tao, Tao, here.” To his mouth.

Joonmyun’s pupils bloom with lust, and Tao’s breath catches. “We probably can’t…it might be too much. But we’ll try. We’ll try."

And Joonmyun is cupping his face, kissing him again. Deeper this time, more appraising, divesting him of his clothes. Tao is kissing his bared shoulder, dragging his hands down the planes of Sehun’s trembling stomach, palming at his cock.

And there is the twin release of pheromones, thick, thick scents, and it’s easy to get caught up in this. Get lost in this. Tasting Joonmyun’s soft, soft moans, melting into Tao’s soft, soft touches.

They’re beautiful in the shadows. Contrasting hard and soft lines, tan and pale, pale skin. Sehun catches sight of the tattoo on Tao’s hip, the small crescent moon. Then the almost full moon on Joonmyun's own. Matching, Sehun can now see. Complementary, complete. A set. They belong to each other. But Sehun, Sehun also belongs now. Here, with them. He’s overcome with a fresh jolt of heat, of arousal at the realization.

“You can get one, too,” Joonmyun murmurs, as if hearing his thoughts. He smooths over the jut of Sehun’s hipbone. “A full moon to hold us both.” And then his hands are stroking lower, gripping, and Sehun gasps, grinds upwards. Sehun arches into him, and Joonmyun's body is toned, inviting, unfamiliar as it is.

Spread naked like this, rendered helpless like this, Sehun’s receptive to the pleasure of them both, Tao focusing on his chest, his nipples, Joonmyun painting a lazy trail down his body.

He feels loved like this. Fully like this.

There’s a rush of hot air, a lazy hum, lips teasing along his cock. Then the pop of a plastic lip, a telltale squelch, a pause, a soft question, an eager nod.

Joonmyun sucks down his cock as he eases the first finger down. He works it slow, testing, pulls off Sehun’s erection to remind Tao that Sehun had asked for Joonmyun down here, Tao at his mouth.

And Sehun, he’d meant Tao kneeling, Tao fucking into his mouth, but Tao kisses him instead, grazing his sides, pulling away between smacks of his lips to tell him how hard he is. He ruts into Sehun’s side.

Joonmyun fucks a second, a third inside, moans against Sehun’s cock when he writhes down, fucks upward into his mouth. And Tao pulls away to watch. Sehun forces Tao to kneel, takes him into his mouth. Sehun melts into the sweet, wet heat.

There's something decidedly commanding in his presence, something that has Sehun clambering to comply, please. As he claims his lips, body. Orders him to fuck down but tell him if it’s too much.

Sehun can feel the ripple of strength beneath his every possessive touch, and Sehun doesn't know how he ever thought Joonmyun wasn't leader. Watching him in between slick glides on Tao’s swelling erection.

“Cock,” he says, manages around Tao’s own cock, lips dragging in a way that has the omega gasping.

Tao coaxes him back.

"I'll break you,” Joonmyun breathes. “I don’t want to hurt you."

Tao is sturdier, he insists. Built for this. Used to this. It's okay. It doesn't have to _mean_ anything. This, this impasse. It's not something they have to try.

And by that point, Sehun can't breathe. He feels Joonmyun with every exhale, everything narrowing down to this one point of contract. The three fingers dragging deliciously along his walls.

And the fourth presses inside.

There are soothing touches along his cheekbones, his wrists. Clumsy, but no less affectionate. Tao, Tao telling him that he can feel how turned on Joonmyun is. How amazing Sehun looks like this for them both. He curls forward to cradle Sehun’s face, thumb affectionately at his mouth.

“You're doing so well," Joonmyun breathes in agreement, encouragement, "taking it so well."

And there's a tightness in his chest, the stretch in his ass, Sehun’s body contracting before expanding.

Tao is touching him, too, fluttering kisses along his jawline. And he's saying the same. Adding that he’s so good. So good for this. The ideal omega. Beautiful like this.

The fingers, they're spreading slowly slowly slowly, and Sehun can't breathe. And the thumb near his mouth has been replaced with lips, swallowing his helpless sounds. Distracting him, Sehun thinks dimly, while he still can. Tao kisses him thoroughly, fiercely then, and yes, he's all that Sehun can think about. Drawn into the familiar promise of his soft lips, persistent tug.

“You want Tao instead? You can with Tao. It’s okay. "

"No," Sehun insists. Because, no it’s not enough. Full as he is. Full almost to the bursting. No, he can take more.

And his entire body is a livewire of sensation. And he almost, almost can't. But it's still so good. The dulled pressure, the fullness of it.

And the fifth, the fucking fifth.

He lets out a shaky breath. Joonmyun retreats just the slightest, and Sehun pulses around his fingers, gasps again at the drag. He pushes back in so, so slowly, careful, steady, gentle in spite of the circumstances, and Tao wraps a hand around Sehun's cock, whispers something about how it'll be so so worth it. How _fuck_ , it's the most delicious fullness. He’ll look so beautiful. He already knows.

And Tao has a flair for the dramatic, the theatrical, but there's realness now. Startling and heart-breaking all the same, Sehun feels naked and vulnerable—even more naked and vulnerable beneath his gaze, subject to his words. The imagery leaves him breathless. And Tao only continues. Asks him to watch, look at the gorgeous, gorgeous cock, the beautiful, beautiful knot he’ll be hanging off tonight.

Tao, he's brazen, performative, distracting, gliding his hands down, twisting smoothly to suck at Joonmyun’s cock. Being coaxed away, reminded that if it won’t work for them if Joonmyun’s too swollen. Won’t fit. Joonmyun groans, snarls almost, and Sehun shudders further in arousal, goes pliant, limp distressingly fast. Joonmyun releases this low grumble of approval, and that has him trembling anew, so hot.

It's sensory overload, but just exactly what he's been aching for, and he makes it known with a needy, hitching whine of approval.

And Sehun is giving into his own beast, then, yielding to the fierceness of his own need and desire.

Joonmyun ruts against him, drags hot, swollen—almost too swollen—against his thigh. Needy, too. Eager, too. Forceful and claiming and possessive in it, but still. Still.

"Alpha," he moans. "Fuck me." And he can feel the way those words affect him. The way Joonmyun's cock twitches against his thigh at the mention of the word. He can smell the earthy musk of his arousal, too. Taste the low rumble of his answering moan.

Sehun's head is dizzy with want, with approval.

Joonmyun, Joonmyun, _Alpha_. His oldest fear, untamed, untouched, but devestating now with his fingertips, pressing against him, _wanting_ him, manuvering him, _having_ him.

Sehun focuses on the warmth and wetness of Joonmyun's mouth at the jut of his shoulder, the iron-hard grip on his hips, the softness of Tao's hands on his face, soothing him, grounding him as he pants at the stretching pleasure-pain of Joonmyun's cock. There's a damning element of claiming, possesion in the way that Joonmyun slides in. A damning element of _want_ on Sehun's part, too.

Sehun clenches at the first stuttering, hesitant press. Intrusion, his body registers, muscles locking, body immobilized. Joonmyun is so big, stretching almost too much for him to handle as Joonmyun eases his way inside. Slow, slow enough for Sehun to be acutely aware of every single centimeter of his length, girth _inside_ of him.

And there really is completion in this.

His body protests, yields, and Sehun thrashes with pleasure, tears swimming in his vision. “Joonmyun," he hears himself moan. "Please, please, please."

Hips flush with Sehun's ass, Joonmyun groans. It's a deep, desperate sound. His eyebrows pinch, lips part, jaw goes slack as he regards Sehun. And Sehun gets the distinct impression he's getting burned alive.

"Sehun, you're so good," he manages, breathless, helpless. Helpless, too. "So good. Take it so well."

Joonmyun is softer than Tao, slower, but more thorough. His strokes are deep, slow, overwhelmingly so. Sehun's consumed in the drag of his tongue, fingertips, cock. Tao’s words of encouragement along his cheek.

His head is dizzy, and he feels extra vulnerable, small and weak, splayed open as he is. Pinned down like this. And yes, this is what Tao had praised. This, this, this is perfection. Joonmyun is letting out the loudest sounds now, feral, unchained, and his unyielding grip forces Sehun upwards as he falls bonelessly into the mattress.

It's violence and intoxication. And he can feel the bruising rattle of every forceful thrust in his bones. His body collapses forward, limp and helpless to the dragging drug of this, Sehun still has the presence of mind—the burning need—to fuck back towards every exquisite, relentless snap. He moves with a wrecked desperation, eager, ruined, needy. A wild, wrecked thing.

From this angle, it's easier, though impersonal. But Joonmyun is turning him soon enough, maneuvering him on top, telling him to set the pace, make it as good as he can for himself.

“Gonna knot soon,” Joonmyun rasps. “Gonna come. Turn around."

But it’s Joonmyun’s that’s turning him, dropping him into his lap. Sehun is leaden limbs, desperate desire.

And it's a visceral, cellular need. Dark and hot. It informs the way he moves, clutching desperately at Joonmyun's shoulders, begging for more. More just more.

He’s drunk on the ripple of muscles beneath Joonmyun’s skin as he strokes deep deep deep.

Sehun, Tao, they are face to face once more, too, and Tao's eyes burn into his, heavy, meaningfully, enrapturing and drugging as Joonmyun continues to ruin him. He can’t move like this either, can only grind back of forth, tears of pleasure, tears of exertion swimming in his vision as his body stretches and stretches and stretches. Give and gives and gives.

Tao is still kneeling at his side, tugging at his erection, moaning huskily as he watches, and Sehun gropes blindly for him, replacing the hand on Tao’s cock with his own, coaxing him closer, mouth open and pliant. Willing, wanting, wet.

“Tao, remember, me here,” Joonmyun emphasizes between heaving fucks. So full, Sehun’s so full. “You at his mouth.”

“Yes—both—two please,” Sehun manages in a wrecked, wrecked whimper. Hoarse and helpless.

And Sehun suckles Tao into his mouth, and Joonmyun’s head crashes forward, lips catching and dragging against Sehun’s throat, his chest. He lets free a reverent “fuck” and emboldened, encouraged, Sehun goes even faster. Filthier. Lets the head of Tao’s cock drag against his lips, his cheek in between bobs. Hums and moans loudly at the heady flavor. The distressingly thick musk and scent of him.

"On my face," Sehun whispers, whimpers—Joonmyun, fuck, he’d just hit that _spot_ —and Tao's body pitches sharply, fucking even deeper inside. And Tao comes almost as soon as Sehun murmurs the words, pulsing into his mouth.

Beneath him, Joonmyun is coming, too. Letting out the loudest, most husky moan, jerking.

And oh oh oh oh fuck the stretch. Almost, almost too much. Dragging inside of him. There. There. There. Joonmyun swivels, grinds it purposefully as Sehun gasps, trembles.

“So good,” he groans helplessly, clinging tight to Tao’s hipbones, being anchored by Joonmyun’s hands at his own hips. “Fuck.”

And Tao, Joonmyun kiss him soothingly, praise him softly for this, too. So good. _He’s_ been so good. The words, the touches, this big, big, big thing, it has Sehun streaking, surging, spilling over, sobbing in relief and completion.

It takes a long, long time for the knot to subside, but when it does, he’s laid on on his side. Sore, sweaty, sticky, soft, small, sated, cradled, coddled, cared for.

And it’s shaky still, uncertain, but he belongs here. He belongs.

**Author's Note:**

> the very last fic of the batch
> 
> this one is a doozy and is tied to some Real Bad fandom memories
> 
> but i hope you enjoyed it and very sincerely fuck outta here if you didn't~


End file.
